New Years Day

Is technology making us disconnected? Findings from a study conducted by YouGov hint that — for millennials — the answer is yes. The research found that nearly one in five US teens prefers to video chat their friends rather than spend time with them face-to-face. YouGov's stu ...more

You were the chosen one, Snapchat! The new download numbers for the social media app show just how hard it will be to bring them back to the light after the rise of the Instagram empire. Last month we reported that Snapchat's Download numbers had fallen 16%, bringing the num ...more

Nope, it's not 2016 again. Samsung is giving it another go at beating its competitor by attempting to unveil their new Galaxy Note 8 before the new iPhone. Because it worked out so well the last time. Still, we probably shouldn't be too worried. Reports about the unveiling ca ...more

When I crack open a new book, I always make sure I have a pen and a highlighter nearby so I can mark away! Anything particularly witty, inspiring, or engaging gets highlighted, underlined, or circled. When I use the Amazon Kindle app on my phone, I do the same thing by writing ...more

It wasn't too long ago that Uber threatened to fire star engineer Anthony Levandowski. Eleven days to be exact. If Levandowski didn't turn over the documentation he allegedly stole from Google's autonomous car division, Uber informed Levandowski that they would take "adverse e ...more

Beijing- and Seattle-based DataMesh have announced the release of a new enterprise geared mixed reality middleware — MeshExpert. This solution for collaborative interaction with dynamic data is made up of two primary components: MeshExpert Live!, a 4K mixed reality capture sys ...more

The common thread between this week's Brief Reality stories is that augmented reality is beginning to prove its worth as a technology that improves workflows and processes. From customer service to healthcare to manufacturing, augmented reality is helping companies improve pro ...more

At Vision Summit 2017, UK-based Rewind, one of the recent additions to the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program, showed off a HoloLens application called "Flight Deck" that genuinely blew me away. The idea of watching a live-action sports experience on a coffee ...more

Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar has escalated the augmented reality advertising arms race, introducing a new rich media ad format that enables augmented reality experiences without a dedicated app. Augmented Reality Digital Placement (ARDP) delivers content to smar ...more

You know, I was actually starting to get comfortable with the idea of the iPhone 8 not showing up until next year. As an Apple fan, I made my peace with it. "There's a lot coming in this model," I told myself. "It does make sense that this many features could cause delays." I ...more

Sepsis is not only a gross sounding word but also a deceptively dangerous and fatal infection. Which is why more than 40 hospitals nationwide are coming together to a new collaboration to help reduce sepsis mortality, named Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes (IPSO). Sepsis i ...more

Intel launched their Advanced Vehicle Lab in Silicon Valley this week, and the tech giant is now on the hunt for potential partners. This isn't Intel's first venture into the driverless arena. Their new self-driving garage — once home to Altera, which Intel acquired in 2015 — ...more

While the numbers may not always seem to agree, the message remains the same: augmented reality is a growth segment. This week's edition of Market Reality starts with two new reports outlining the expected good fortunes for the industry and concludes with an example of a compa ...more

The battle of the budget phone is well and truly underway, as both T-Mobile and ZTE have launched affordable new devices simultaneously. This week, ZTE's Max XL and T-Mobile's Coolpad Defiant were released for those of us with a limited budget. While not quite as budget-frien ...more

Those of us with modern smartphones know that 4G LTE networks have provided us with a phenomenal experience. One light years beyond what we had access to before. For some time, AT&T has been teasing its dive into the next iteration of network speeds, agonizingly doing so witho ...more

During his opening address on April 18 at F8, Facebook's developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched the company's augmented reality platform centered on artificial intelligence-powered cameras. The new AR platform will allow developers to display information, add digi ...more

The race to the driverless finish line just got more challenging as Apple seems to have joined the pack. Friday, the global superpower secured a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that allows them to test autonomous cars in the state. For several years, A ...more

Uber has been in the hot seat for awhile now, for many reasons, especially for being sued by Waymo over stolen LiDAR designs. But now, perhaps the attention will be taken off both Uber and Waymo as a new contender enters the LiDAR arena; A small, independent company called Lum ...more

It's happened to all iOS users: You're talking to a friend or watching TV, and all of a sudden, you hear "I'm not quite sure what you've said." Apparently, your phone heard something that resembled "Hey, Siri," and activated the assistant. But now, thanks to a new patent from ...more

It may seem strange to find the director of engineering at a question-and-answer site all of a sudden pick up and lead a new driverless startup, but to Kah Seng Tay, both engineering tasks require building the right infrastructure to handle large amounts of AI data. Drive.ai, ...more

Apple is in the process of developing its own graphics processors for future iPhones, according to recent reports. While the tech giant has remained silent about the news, its business partner Imagination Technologies, a chip manufacturer, confirmed that within the next 15–24 ...more

While clicking random links on the internet probably isn't the best idea to begin with, now you can rest easy knowing that your iPhone won't repeatedly dial 911 after tapping a malicious link in Twitter, Facebook, or other apps that use iOS's WebView. The links in question, w ...more

As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change o ...more

Android lovers out there might be sad to hear that a high-end version of the Samsung Galaxy S8+ with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage won't be released in the US, but rather, in China. Yesterday, Samsung launched its two new Galaxy flagships, the S8 and S8+, at the ...more

Google's Pixel smartphone is striking up some heated competition between phone makers HTC, LG, TCL, and Coolpad, as the Pixel 3 gets ready to release in 2018. Yep, you heard that right—not the Pixel, not the Pixel 2, but the Pixel 3—which shows that Google is really committed ...more

Uber resumed its pilot program for driverless cars after one of its autonomous vehicles crashed in Tempe, Arizona last weekend. The program was grounded in Arizona, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco after the incident on Friday, when a Volvo self-driving SUV collided with another ...more

During the last few months, WhatsApp's Google Play Store ratings have been tanking—all the way down to an average of 3.4 stars from the instant messenger's usual average of 4.1. Within the last week, though, WhatsApp has received thousands of seemingly fake 5-star reviews that ...more

Apple is combining internal and external talent in an effort to give them in edge in the augmented reality market, though we still don't know what form their foray into alternative realities will actually take. Rumors have been spreading for years about Apple's interest in au ...more

A new app called Roadie now makes life a little easier by connecting users to people who can transport their stuff. The app allows users to transport anything from dogs to getting rid of your ex's things. Furthermore, anyone can register as a sender, or become a driver to make ...more

The Washington Post believes augmented reality adds an extra layer to stories, and they're doubling down on that belief by adding in new AR features into their already popular "rainbow" news (iOS and Android) and Classic (iOS and Android) news apps. Last year the media compan ...more

You can get eggs and high-quality compost from backyard chickens—but you can also get Salmonella. Urban dwellers are increasingly taking a page from rural communities by keeping backyard chickens. Part of a grassroots sustainability movement, more people are discovering the b ...more

According to the National Safety Federation (NSF), pet bowls and toys carry coliform bacteria, including Staph bacteria, yeast, and mold. Additionally, an (unscientific) survey from Petco found that almost one-third of pet owners do not know the extent of contamination that th ...more

Google Assistant has introduced tappable shortcuts on the Google app for Android, iOS, and Google.com this week. The tech giant made the official announcement on their blog on Tuesday after much online speculation that they were integrating their screen search feature into th ...more

In an early morning blog post, Microsoft announced the expansion of the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program. This announcement comes on the tail of an expanded HoloLens release over the last few months to many countries outside the initial US and Canada. Micro ...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

Phuket, the island in Thailand typically associated with paradise and most recently, illegally-run hotels, now has a different problem—a stray cat with the claws of death. Weera Pantip, a 63-year-old man with a weakened immune system, fell ill and died from necrotizing fascii ...more

A New York creamery was forced to recall items after a fatal disease outbreak stemming from their soft cheese products. Vulto Creamery, in Walton, New York, recalled eight cheese items after a possible contamination of Listeria monocytogenes, according to the US Food & Drug A ...more

In a press event this past week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, Unity Labs, the experimental and forward thinking arm of Unity, announced an upcoming toolset for developers in the augmented, mixed, and virtual reality space called the XR Foundat ...more

This morning, in an early morning session at GDC 2017, Brandon Bray, a senior program manager lead at Microsoft, revealed a mixed reality headset made in collaboration with Acer—a different headset than the one we saw from Acer at CES 2017 earlier this year. Also at the event, ...more

In the past, to see a pre-constructed state of the house that you would one day live in, you had to be able to read blueprints or hire an artist to sketch it out. Later came the ability to have a 3D rendering of that house on a screen, but you'd still have to work hard to envi ...more

Before you bite into that beautiful tomato in your garden, the tomato fruitworm, or the Colorado potato beetle, might have beat you to it. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), researchers explained how microbes inside the gu ...more

HoloLens developer Michael Peters of In-Vizible has released quite a few videos since receiving his HoloLens last year. Many of his experiments are odd and funny, but some include serious potential approaches to data visualization. In the videos embedded below, you'll specific ...more

With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Fransisco just a few weeks away, Microsoft Senior Program Manager Vlad Kolesnikov has announced via Channel9 (Microsoft's developer news outlet) that not only will new low-cost virtual reality headsets be coming in March to deve ...more

Meta's long-awaited Meta 2 development kit finally began shipping in late-December last year, after having been delayed about six months. While very few have received a dev kit at this point, some more information about the headset has just been announced; Depth-sensing techno ...more

Merge VR, a company mostly known for its virtual reality experiences, is moving into and creating an augmented reality experience that combines an iPhone or Android smartphone, a set of goggles to put your phone in, and a box about the size of a Rubik's Cube which looks more a ...more

It's 2017—new year, same us. We vow to keep scouring the net for the best how-tos and feature the makers and doers who create mind-blowing projects. And what a great year it's been so far because boy did we find an amazing tutorial. Inspire to Make is a YouTube channel run by ...more

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear, right? Wrong. Apparently, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is to play everyone's favorite carols in the style of well-known video game themes, all while keeping a deadpan expression on your face. ...more

Origami is the Japanese art of folding paper, which has been around since the 1600s. The word origami comes from the two Japanese words ori, meaning "folding," and kami, meaning "paper." Traditionally, one sheet of paper is transformed into a three-dimensional object without ...more

Each generation of smartphones ushers in a new set of top-of-the-line specs, with processing power, battery size, and display resolution growing by the year. These headlining features get the most press, but there's one unsung hero that has the potential to make the biggest di ...more

Kazendi, a London-based HoloLens development and rapid prototyping studio, just released a new iOS app in Apple's App Store that lets developers stream HoloLens applications live from the headset to an iPad or iPhone. It's called HoloStream, and is the first iOS/HoloLens cross ...more

It took nearly six months, but Google has finally made its wildly popular iOS keyboard available to Android users. Technically, it's just an update to the existing Google Keyboard app for Android, but it renames the app to "Gboard" and includes all of the features from iOS, so ...more

Just over a month ago, the Rubik's Cube world record was smashed by Mats Valk, a Dutch speedcuber, during the Jawa Timur Open 2016. Valk was able to shave 0.16 seconds off the previous record of 4.90 seconds, which was a pretty impressive feat. Yesterday, Valk's record was un ...more

The new Google Assistant is only officially available on three platforms—newer Android phones (Pixels and those running Marshmallow and Nougat), the Google Allo app, and Google Home. However, most of the Assistant's basic functionality is also bundled into the Google app for A ...more

In 4.74 seconds, I can barely bend over to tie my shoes, and somehow this guy managed to crush the human world record for solving the Rubik's Cube in that time exactly. Update: Rubik's Cube World Record Gets Beaten... Again. New Record Is 4.737 Seconds! Video: . Mats Valk, a ...more

Today in Los Angeles, Unity will be at the Loews Hollywood Hotel to host Unite '16, its annual developer conference. Unite is Unity's platform for showing the development community its upcoming direction and roadmap for augmented and virtual reality, game development, 3D techn ...more

After many months of endless speculation over the mysterious augmented reality platform Magic Leap, software engineers worldwide have been waiting for any news of what development environment this amazing technology might use. Thanks to Paul Reynolds, the former Magic Leap Sen ...more

Google is working on something so big they had to name it after an entire galaxy: A new operating system that merges Android and Chrome OS into one unified front. Android and Chrome meet to form "Andromeda," which, coincidentally, is a nearby galaxy that is currently on a col ...more

In a surprising move, Apple just released iOS 10 developer beta 7 and public beta 6, just four days after releasing the last betas. Apple hasn't pushed out this many betas since iOS 5, and they're on pace to break that record. From the update notes, there doesn't seem to be a ...more

Although professional sports has been no stranger to emerging technology, it still seems hard to think about how a football player might benefit from strapping on a VR headset. While it won't do much in an actual game, many athletes can improve by using virtual reality as a tr ...more

The HTC Vive and Valve's SteamVR make for one of the more compelling virtual reality experiences, mixing in real-world motion tracking with the immersive headset. But third-party manufacturers couldn't tap into the Vive's full potential and make creative new peripherals—until ...more