Mobile Apps

There are over 425,000 apps in the iTunes App Store and the Android Market has over 300,000 available, which makes it really hard to tell which ones you want and which ones you don't. One of the best ways to find new mobile apps is from your family, friends and colleagues—thos ...more

On its quest for online domination, Amazon.com continues to expand past its basic web marketplace to fulfill the needs of everyone and anyone with a little cash to spend. First, they battled the likes of Barnes & Noble and Borders Books with their online Kindle eBook shop. Ne ...more

The Android App Market is flooded with tons of new mobile applications each day. But there can't be that many developers out there familiar with the Android OS, so where are all of these apps coming from? People like you. People like me. All of which don't have the slightest ...more

In a recent series of tweets, investor and entrepreneur (and NR50 member) Amitt Mahajan summarized the challenges and opportunities for iOS developers looking to leverage Apple's ARKit for augmented reality experiences. "ARKit apps still have the same problem as every other m ...more

Microsoft's new mobile operating system is officially out on the market, and programmers are hard at work developing new mobile apps for Windows Phone 7 devices. But there's a lot going on in this new platform, which means there's a whole lot to be learned, and the only man in ...more

Because of its ability to place digital content into the real world, augmented reality lends itself well to artists and creatives. Two new mobile apps, one from Google and another from an indie developer with ties to Magic Leap, invert the creative conceit by taking the real ...more

It's long past time to face the facts: farts are funny. The first fart joke dates back nearly 4,000 years to the ancient Sumerian people. References to flatulence were also found in ancient Greece within the works of Aristophanes. (More like Aristo-fannies, am I right?) A sta ...more

If you use apps on your smartphone, chances are you have no idea what those apps are doing with your information. Just this year, there have been several scandals involving apps transmitting user data, like Path uploading users' entire address books onto its servers, HTC's Sec ...more

Facebook is really good at two things: connecting people all over the world and force-feeding changes to its users (ahem...Facebook Messenger). Now, its most recent "feature" adds the ability to auto-enhance all photos uploaded from its mobile app. So, if you think you are gr ...more

There are over 250,000 apps in the Android Market, ranging from free productivity programs to a ridiculous $200 for a vuvuzela horn effect. But chances are you don't have the vuvuzela app on your Android smartphones right now, but you are likely to have one of the ten most pop ...more

With mobile developers near and far primed to implement augmented reality into their iOS apps with Apple's ARKit, uSens offers them a new tool for markerless location tracking. The tracking solutions provider announced today that they have developed an inside-out positional t ...more

Texting is a godsend to mobile devices, but it also has its caveats. Sending a text to someone requires visual, manual, and cognitive attention—looking at what you're typing, holding the phone steady, and thinking about what you're trying to say. So, texting while doing pretty ...more

The annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is one of those events that everyone talks about, so an augmented reality experience in the festival's mobile app and from one of its headlining acts, Eminem, basically means the technology is officially cool. The iOS versio ...more

If you're spending hours on your phone playing games like Angry Birds and Candy Crush Saga, or posting online to Google+ and Pinterest, you're probably being spied on. The latest releases from NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden reveal that the National Security Agency, and its ...more

Android has released a new application called ezNetScan, which is a free app that scans the wireless network you're connected to and gives you a full log of all of the devices connected to that network. This isn't new for smartphone users, let alone Android users. Fing has bee ...more

As expected, Apple revealed today at the WWDC keynote that ARKit 2.0 will support multiplayer gaming support and persistent content, which will arrive this fall with iOS 12. In addition to persistent and shared experiences, ARKit 2.0 will bring improved face tracking, more re ...more

A man once told me to never complain about gas prices. With the average price of regular unleaded gas at $3.34 a gallon, it's hard not to, even if it is the holiday season. Since my car averages about 22 mpg, the man offered me this proposition: "If I offered you $3.34, would ...more

When you don't have anyone to play with in the flesh, nothing beats a round of competitive online Scrabble. If you're constantly on the move, the Scrabble app developed by Electronic Arts (EA) for Android and iOS mobile devices is probably your favorite way to play. But let's ...more

Augmented reality technology is often likened to magic powers, so it is fitting that a new AR experience featuring the Harry Potter franchise uses the newest AR tricks from Facebook and its Spark AR platform. With Harry Potter and the Cursed Child returning to Broadway this f ...more

If you're using a mobile device, it's a pretty safe bet that your apps are sending lots of information back and forth from their servers. To make sure there is no inappropriate data collection going on, it's worth setting up a web proxy to spy on this traffic, so you know exac ...more

Disneyland may be the happiest place on Earth, but there are definitely a few flaws that only small kids could overlook. The lines are extravagantly long, everything is overpriced, and there are tons of grumpy people and crazy children running around as if they just found out ...more

Our attention spans have vastly shortened thanks to the Internet and our subsequent procurement of information from it at a rapid pace. It's tough to pay attention to something for a good amount of time, unless it's ridiculously interesting and stimulating. It's gotten so bad ...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

After applying augmented reality as a solution for the sale and marketing of sneakers, Nike is taking the next step in its adoption of AR to improve the customer experience. On Thursday, Nike unveiled its new Nike Fit tool, which the company is preparing to add to its existin ...more

Few brands have been more enthusiastic about augmented reality than Lego, which has now expanded its AR experiences from toys to theme parks. The brand recently opened a new attraction, dubbed Mythica: World of Mythical Creature, at Legoland Windsor in the UK. Don't Miss: Ha ...more

As one of the household brands in creative software, Adobe is now ready to lay its claim to the artistic side of augmented reality. On Monday, concurrent with the kickoff its annual Adobe Max conference, Adobe's Project Aero officially graduated to public release, but Adobe a ...more

I think most of these are iPad apps, which I don't have, but I'd love to see some reviews of some of these apps to find out whether they're worth downloading or not.

In the latest update to its augmented reality platform, Wikitude has introduced new plane detection capabilities that can anchor virtual content to surfaces at any orientation. Both ARKit and ARCore can recognize horizontal and vertical surfaces in their current versions, but ...more

With the announcement of ARKit 2.0 at WWDC 2018, Apple is bringing some powerful new capabilities to mobile augmented reality apps this fall. Shared experiences, persistent content, and 3D object recognition will enable more social, transcendent, and immersive experiences for ...more

We're still weeks away from a probably HoloLens 2 release, but Microsoft's immersive computing team is still hard at work on other aspects of its "mixed reality" ecosystem. Earlier this week, Microsoft published a new extension for Unity and the Mixed Reality Tookit that enab ...more

With technology giants like Apple and Google finally entering the fray, the move toward mass adoption of augmented reality is ramping up. Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore will allow entirely new categories of apps to be made. Unfortunately, in a world of heavy competition, ge ...more

With its 3D engine being responsible for approximately 60% of augmented and virtual reality experiences, Unity is continuing to place a premium on tools that not only keep developers working in its development environment but also make their workflows easier. During the keyno ...more

There are over 3 million apps in the Google Play Store, all optimized for the small screen in your hands. While that number sounds staggering, there are still many online tools and websites that require you to use a mobile browser since app development is expensive. However, t ...more

Apple might not be ready to unveil its rumored-yet-unconfirmed smartglasses. But the iPhone's current depth-sensing hardware is proving to be useful for both smartglasses makers and mobile AR apps. This week, North launched a new app that leverages the TrueDepth camera on the ...more

A little less than a year after announcing "Project Astoria," Microsoft announced Thursday, February 25th, that it will end the "Bridge," which would have brought Android apps to the Windows Store. Microsoft's Android Bridge (aka Project Astoria) is no more.. Microsoft also an ...more

Location services provider Mapbox is expanding the reach of its augmented reality development capabilities to include apps for automobiles as well as smartphone navigation. On Thursday, Mapbox announced a trio of new features for its Vision SDK, which will soon be available t ...more

Gas prices across the United States have skyrocketed, with today's national average for regular unleaded gas at $3.51 a gallon, with California leading the pack at $3.90 a gallon. AAA reports that last week's national average was just $3.37. That's a $0.14 increase in just one ...more

Nowadays, there's a mobile app for just about everything—but that doesn't mean it should be on your smartphone. Not diggin' what SPB Shell 3D did to your home screen? Accidentally purchased Angry Sperms instead of Angry Birds? Want to try out the upcoming Smuggle Truck without ...more

Garden Apps have just unveiled their new Sprinkler Time mobile app, which shows users the correct number of minutes to set their sprinkler times for maintaining healthy gardens all year round. "Available for iPhones, iPads, Android smartphones and tablets, as well as on the W ...more

You may not do it in public, and you might not admit to it among your friends, but you do it. We all do it... sing. We sing when we're alone in our cars, at home when no one's listening, and when we've had a little too much to drink and don't care anymore, all inhibitions asid ...more

Chilling on the beach and want some grub? If you're starving and can't afford to lose those sun rays walking around for some lunch, have the food come to you instead! A company called URGE is making it all possible. Since launching over three months ago in Miami, Florida, the ...more

Augmented reality experiences for consumers, for the most part, are relegated to mobile devices at present, but creation and development of those experiences is still a province of desktop computers. Hold my beer, says Torch 3D, Inc. On Monday, the company introduced a new T ...more

Mobile app publishers are using augmented reality to solve everyday measurement problems from measuring the length or height of items to previewing furniture in the home. Now, it looks like checking luggage dimensions for carry-on eligibility is another volumetric problem inc ...more

The first mobile augmented reality app out of the gate with support for Magic Leap One Creator Edition is Thyng, who is planning to release the headset version of the app later this year. Available now for iOS and Android using their respective AR toolkits, Thyng enables user ...more

Among a treasure trove of new developer information on the Lumin OS that Magic Leap recently published on its Creator Portal appears to be the official confirmation of the Magic Leap Mobile Companion App. The app was alluded to in job postings previously reported by Next Real ...more

There's a lot of misinformation about VPN services, and it stems from the fact that not all of them are created equal. Some focus on privacy, others on security, and a few VPNs are seemingly even purpose-built for the polar opposite: data collection. We made this guide to help ...more

While some companies like IKEA and Lowe's zig towards ARKit to entice shoppers, Target has opted to zag to broader appeal with an augmented reality see-before-you-buy tool for its mobile website. With Target's new See In Your Space Tool, shoppers can visualize more than 200 f ...more

For the entirety of its existence, Snapchat has lived on mobile, but in its quest to lead the augmented reality industry, the company is now bringing those mobile AR experiences to desktops. On Friday, Snap introduced Snap Camera, an app for PC and Mac that gives users access ...more

If you have a limited mobile data plan on your iPhone, you know how tricky it can be to stay within your given allotment. Large app installs and updates, 4K resolution videos, and photo backups can waste precious data resources in no time. And apps like Apple News, Facebook, M ...more

The Halloween season is the perfect time for telling scary stories, but augmented reality is here to bring the tradition of frightening children to the modern age. On Thursday, app developer Within released "Willowcrest Manor," the sixth story for its Wonderscope mobile AR ap ...more

One of the hallmarks of augmented reality's coming of age is that the technology is starting to find a home in business categories that are less obvious compared to typical AR enterprise use cases. The latest example comes from Qualcomm and Accenture, who have collaborated on ...more

For enterprise augmented reality platform makers, remote assistance apps represent one of the greatest opportunities to show off the power of immersive computing. These apps enable experts to guide front-line workers or customers with AR prompts and other content in the field ...more

In the latest example of non-tech companies taking on augmented reality marketing, online travel site Travelocity has added an AR version of its Roaming Gnome mascot to its mobile app. Available for iOS and Android, the feature, enabled by ARKit and ARCore, respectively, give ...more