Marvel and Walmart are looking to capitalize on the uber-successful Black Panther film with a mobile augmented reality app designed to push the franchise's merchandise. Enlisting mobile app developer Current Studios, the Explore Wakanda app for iOS and Android lets challenger ...more
Continuing with its new paradigm of using augmented reality to cover the news, The New York Times has published a feature story that takes a peek into the late David Bowie's eclectic wardrobe of on-stage outfits. The retrospective showcases four iconic Bowie costumes, includi ...more
When first released, the iPhone SE was nearly identical to its iPhone 6S counterparts in all but form factor. While the rumored SE 2 (if it even happens) is expected to follow suit with the iPhone 8 models, that hasn't stopped people from wondering what it would look like with ...more
Historically, Apple loves to drop hints about its major upcoming events through clues included on its invitations. Those invites usually require a good bit of deciphering to connect the dots, but in the case of Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2018 invit ...more
Despite the wide availability of markerless augmented reality experiences for mobile devices, there is still a market for scanned triggers for content, as evidenced by the new image recognition capabilities on Facebook's Camera AR platform. AR experiences for the movies Ready ...more
Samsung has had a rich screenshot editor in TouchWiz for years, and Apple even added a similar feature to iOS 11. Until now, stock Android has lagged behind in this area, but that's finally fixed in Android 9.0 Pie. Screenshot editing in Android Pie is actually rather intuiti ...more
Following in the augmented reality footsteps of Pokémon GO, Universal Studios has decided to give us an AR version of Jurassic World. The new game is called "Jurassic World Alive," and while the trailer for the game doesn't show any actual gameplay, the cinematic approach to ...more
If you're looking for an alternative iOS keyboard for your iPhone, look no further than Gboard. The Google-made keyboard is bursting with features like web search, Google Maps, GIFs, and more. Now, Gboard is adding a new feature that'll make it easier to find the perfect emoji ...more
Thanks to Apple's beta preview of iOS 11.3 released last week, app developers are already experimenting with the ARKit capabilities that will be available to regular users this spring. The highlight of ARKit 1.5 is vertical surface detection. The first iteration of ARKit was ...more
On Sunday, the annual Grammy Awards delivered its usual mix of fashion, live performances, and music industry magic, but this time with one important difference: Animojis. During the broadcast, two iPhone X commercials ran that showed off how TrueDepth camera, in combination ...more
Although The Last Jedi hype has mostly passed, there are still a good number of fans out there dueling Sith lords in augmented reality via their new Lenovo Mirage headsets. Now, thanks to an update on Thursday, those aspiring Jedi have a new AR challenge to engage in the Star ...more
If you're anything like most iPhone users, then you've probably grown tired of Siri's antics by now. She frequently has trouble with even the most basic of questions, and severely lags behind Google Assistant with regards to usability. Unfortunately, Google Assistant for iPhon ...more
Nobody likes spam, and that's why email apps continue to vie for your digital attention by boasting about new ways to filter and reduce unsolicited messages. Outlook, an already fantastic client for focusing your cluttered inbox, has now joined in on the action, giving its use ...more
When it comes to marketing, sexy sells, a point that has been lost on most augmented reality hardware makers focused mostly on the geek space. But a new promotional spot from AR-in-the-car accessory maker WayRay indicates that AR companies are beginning to see the virtual sizz ...more
A new telemedicine application for the Microsoft HoloLens is promising paramedics and EMTs a new tool for diagnosis and treatment of patients in the field. Designed through a partnership between medical software company Exelus and HoloLens developer HoloForge, Nomadeec levera ...more
Attention Android users — the famously iPhone-only HQ Trivia is here! If you've been waiting for the worldwide sensation to come to your smartphone, now's your chance to dive into the excitement. While HQ Trivia has been on iOS since its launch in October, Android users have ...more
Augmented reality developers are rapidly bringing science fiction tropes into the real world, with the latest example leveraging the TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X to emulate the cloaking technology made famous by movies like Predator and Marvel's The Avengers. Japanese dev ...more
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has officially arrived on Coinbase, which means you can now easily buy, sell, send, and receive the digital currency without having to manually set up a wallet or trade on an exchange like Poloniex. This addition has boosted the price of BCH, which is curren ...more
The same approach to augmented reality that some companies use to improve workforce productivity could also make it easier for car owners to operate and maintain their vehicles. Mercedes-Benz is driving down that new path by releasing an augmented reality owner's manual calle ...more
You love augmented reality (that's why you're here!), but some of you also love cryptocurrencies, most popularly known in one of its forms as Bitcoin. So you might be wondering why you can't you find two of your favorite emerging technologies together in one app. Take heart, e ...more
When it comes to identifying what's fashionable on the runway, including cutting edge tech that bleeds into the mainstream of style, Vogue magazine stands at the top of the list. So it's fitting that the fashion tastemaker has now updated its iOS app with an AR camera effect ...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
Now, when the weather outside is frightful, Pokémon GO players can expect it to be just as unpleasant in augmented reality. A new update to the popular location-based AR game brings a dynamic weather system to the game. In the new update, weather effects on the game's map wil ...more
Just days after the launch of Google Poly, the marketplace for 3D virtual objects that developers can use for augmented and virtual reality apps, SketchFab, the current leader in the space, is firing back with a major enhancement to its platform. The company has announced an ...more
People love emojis, it's a scientific fact. So an app that places poops, smileys, and ghosts into social media videos should, in theory, be the most popular app ever. That's likely the reasoning behind the new Holocam app, which is available for $0.99 in the iOS App Store. Sur ...more
Current shipping estimates for the iPhone X are 5–6 weeks, but is there a chance you'll get yours tomorrow? The initial preorders for the iPhone X dried up in minutes, and those who preordered after the first ten minutes are seeing delivery estimates from Nov. 16 all the way ...more
HDR, or high-dynamic range, is currently the best way to view movies and TV shows on your iPhone 8 or 8 Plus. With a wider color gamut and a broad luminance range, there's no beating HDR video for the ultimate viewing experience. Unless, of course, you don't have the storage t ...more
If you're a regular reader of this site, there's a good chance friends and family turn to you as their volunteer technical support staff. In these instances, it can be difficult to troubleshoot purely through just verbal descriptions over the phone. While there are a plethora ...more
Mobile game companies Hit Point Studios and Legacy Games have adapted their Color BlastAR augmented reality game for iOS with the ARKit platform. The free game, aimed at children 6-12 years old, places colorless cartoon characters throughout the physical play space. Players, ...more
As a long-distance runner off and on for the past, I absolutely detests hills. While there are many apps that can measure elevation and slope for certain routes, understanding spatial data on a line graph or even an elevation map can be difficult. A solution arrives by way of ...more
With the official release of iOS 11, the availability of an app that uses the much-hyped ARKit platform to place virtual furniture in one's home was expected. The fact that the app comes from Houzz, and not IKEA, may come as a surprise, considering that the latter was feature ...more
Apple has billed ARKit as a means to turn millions of iPhones and iPads into augmented reality devices. The refrain is similar for Kaon Interactive, a developer of product catalog apps for businesses. Kaon's High Velocity Marketing Platform powers product catalog apps for com ...more
An update to the Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 enhances the study of the human body with augmented reality courtesy of iOS 11 and ARKit. The app provides a detailed 3D model of the human anatomy, allowing students to see tissues and organs and virtually dissect without all the mes ...more
While IKEA will employ ARKit to help you see how that new couch looks in your living room, Redbubble wants to show you throw pillows that match. Redbubble, an online marketplace for clothing and home décor from independent artists, has updated its iOS app to enable customers ...more
Apple demonstrated their continued interest and investment into the awesome world of augmented reality during their Sept. 12 event, highlighting a few new AR games that will appear on iPhones thanks to ARKit. But that's not all you can expect — as long as you have an iPhone wi ...more
Is the Home button the main reason you haven't pulled the trigger on a new iPhone? Are you worried that you'll miss its functionality too much, or that simple things like accessing your home screen will be too hard? Well, don't worry about any of that, because Apple came up wi ...more
It seems like it was just last week that AMC and Next Games unveiled their location-based zombie game based on hit TV series The Walking Dead. (Wait, actually it was just last week.) But, just like a walker seeking fresh flesh, AMC is back this week with another AR mobile app ...more
While not specifically an augmented reality conference, IFA 2017 packed a plethora of presentations with AR themes, including devices with AR features from Sony and Motorola, a smartphone-based AR headset from Lenovo, and a new processor from Huawei that will facilitate AR exp ...more
Your display name in ProtonMail is what email recipients will see when they first receive your message in ProtonMail, Gmail, or another email provider. You can choose this name when you first set up your ProtonMail account, but it can also be set up after the fact if you skipp ...more
Thanks to augmented reality, fashion companies can let customers try on cosmetics, clothes, more cosmetics, and sunglasses from the comfort of their homes and through the non-judgmental eyes of their smartphone camera. Now, watches enter the augmented reality fitting room, co ...more
Andrew Mucci, a New Jersey-based vlogger who is also Social Media Coordinator at Sennheiser, likes to use Instagram not only as a platform for the brand but also as a place to experiment with content on his own account. Sennheiser, the German-based company that specializes in ...more
A camera app demo that uses Apple's ARKit has been blowing up on Twitter recently and it very well might be the future of how we take pictures with our iOS devices. The demo was created by Twitter user Zach Lieberman, a self-described researcher, educator, and maker of art us ...more
If you've been looking for an alternative to Google Maps, look no further than Waze. In addition to benefits like crowd-sourced traffic data, police trap locations, and road work avoidance, the app even lets you personalize the voices used for navigation and directions. Best ...more
Signal Private Messenger is famous for its end-to-end encryption, but you can't even use the messaging app without having a real phone number attached to it. Luckily, there is a way around this limitation, so you can use Signal even if you don't have a valid SIM card in your s ...more
Think you're a true Star Wars fan? I bet you haven't created a demo using Apple's ARKit that creates a map of the entire Star Wars galaxy. How's that for being a fanatic? ARKit developer Namek Kural posted the demo on YouTube after previously abandoning a website with similar ...more
If you've ever wondered how to import your photos in Snapseed, then you've come to the right place. Snapseed is a wonderful photo-editing app and will provide you with many tools to take your photos to the next level. But you can't get to that next level if you don't know how ...more
Gaming with augmented reality just keeps getting cooler and cooler. Nitrome is no amateur at games. The company has hundreds of mobile and browser games. A few years back, the company came up with the idea that they referred to as "project surface." Essentially, the idea was ...more
Developers looking to create shared experiences that support both HoloLens as well as ARKit may be able to get it working in Unity since that the engine supports both platforms — though, the amount of effort it might take to get that working could be a bit much. Up to this poi ...more
Map apps, while incredibly helpful in our technology-centric world, can often be a source of frustration. No maps app is perfect, and things can get confusing fairly quickly when trying to navigate GPS mapping. iOS developer Andrew Hart has experimented with a new way of mobil ...more
If you have movies and videos stored on Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, you should definitely be using the VLC app for iPhone. After setting a few things up, VLC will let you stream videos directly from any of these services with a proper video player UI, complete wit ...more
It's safe to say that mobile developers are excited about the prospects of Apple's ARKit, with demos popping up seemingly on the hour on YouTube, Twitter, etc. Now, developers are starting to preview actual products. One of them, Directive Games based in Shanghai, China, has ...more
San Francisco-based startup AstroReality is putting the AR in lunar with a high-detailed model of the moon that comes to life through an accompanying augmented reality mobile app. The LUNAR Pro has already surpassed its listed flexible goal of $36,000 on IndieGoGo. With two w ...more
Beer pong is a classic game created by college kids to drink and have a good time. However, the process of setting it up is messy and takes a while. Luckily, a demo has introduced an app coming soon where you can play an augmented reality version of beer pong using Apple's ARK ...more
Companies are already clamoring to figure out strategies for integrating augmented reality into their advertising platforms. AR is going to become a huge asset to marketers, and Apple's ARKit is only going to help that along. Mixed reality producer Bilawal Singh Sidhu has give ...more
It's certain that the release of Apple's ARKit is going to be game changing for businesses. This demo video was created by YouTube user hdsenevi who used the ARKit to create a simple bar chart. The chart has adjustable settings, allowing the user to make each bar larger or sm ...more
When you're playing videos, the actual content should be the focus, not the media app's interface. But with VLC's default theme on Android, the bright orange-and-white motif shocks your eyes in a dimly-lit setting and draws your attention away from what really matters. Let's c ...more
A new demo has given a hint about what's going to be possible in the world of mixed reality, thanks to Apple's ARKit. The demo comes from Normal VR, a virtual reality developer that is currently working with leading VR platforms such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation ...more
You will soon be able to play an AR version of one of the most frustrating mobile games of all time, thanks to Apple's ARKit. We all remember the game "Flappy Bird." It took the nation by storm, making millions fast. People became addicted to trying to get that little bird to ...more
HoloLens developers have created some useful solutions for visualizing building models and viewing construction plans overlaid on the job environment. Instead of investing in new (and, at this point, relatively expensive) hardware, Danish software company Dalux is proposing t ...more
Microsoft recently released "Seeing AI," an app aimed to help the blind understand their surroundings. As Microsoft puts it, "the app narrates the world around you by turning the visual world into an audible experience." We asked Matthew Chao, the brother of one of our founde ...more