Play a Toy Flute

Snapchat is mostly credited as the first AR social network, and, like most social media companies, its revenue model is nested largely within advertising. As such, the company now has a new avenue for branded content. Of course, they are not the only mobile advertising game i ...more

When just floating peacefully in the water with their brood mates, the Culex mosquito larvae in the image above does not look very frightening. But in their adult form, they are the prime vector for spreading West Nile virus — a sometimes mild, sometimes fatal disease. Part o ...more

As fun as it is to see Fido's face light up when you feed him table scraps, American dogs are getting fat. The good news is that research is homing in on nutritional strategies to boost canine capabilities to maintain a healthy weight. In 2015, in a survey of 1,224 cats and d ...more

Android's permissions system is simple, transparent, and straightforward. When installing an app, you get a chance to review all of the permissions that the app has requested. These can range from accessing your location data to holding a "wakelock" in order to prevent your ph ...more

For my money, one of the greatest improvements brought about from the smartphone revolution is the advent of visual voicemail. No longer do we have to slog through dial menus or trudge through every single message to get to the next. We can just look at our messages, right the ...more

Thanks to its advanced cameras, the Galaxy S9 can capture videos at an astonishing 960 frames per second (fps). To put it in perspective, you now have you the ability to record the world around you in ways that previously required expensive professional camera equipment. And t ...more

Oh no... your precious iPhone is in shambles. Maybe you shattered your screen after a crazy night of celebrating, or maybe your two-year-old jabbed a toy into your iPhone's charging port, completely destroying it in the process. Now what? Do you take it to a repair shop, or go ...more

When your cat goes missing, chances are it's just chilling in a cozy spot under the couch, or maybe even hiding from you. So it's okay to not freak out just yet. Cats love to hide as if they're spiders, and even their hiding spots are similar. You can find them in corners, on ...more

One of the many perks of being a Nexus user is that Google bakes in all sorts of goodies for use on its dessert-themed OS. From an easily unlocked bootloader, to a smooth and well-crafted "stock" UI experience, to being one of the first devices to receive updates straight from ...more

It's been a while since Android got a true Easter egg with a new software update. Remember when Google added Marshmallow's Flappy Bird-style mini game? For Android 11, we get a new game, and like Android Nougat, it revolves around the infamous Android Neko cat. Google's appar ...more

After an Instagram creator created a viral sensation last holiday season with the Which Disney camera effect, Disney followed it up with a Sponsored Lens playing a similar roulette with programming from Hulu. Now, Disney is back with a Snapchat Lens that takes its Hulu promot ...more

Here at Next Reality, our typical approach to all things augmented reality involves vision combined with remote control, either via a handheld device, gaze control, or hand/finger tracking. But a new dynamic takes the notion of interaction with virtual content into a new real ...more

This year, Google released two Nexus phones to glowing reviews, and as we've grown to expect, the Android community wasted no time in coming up with a root method for both. In fact, legendary root developer Chainfire even devised an entirely new "systemless" method for rooting ...more

As a company, Facebook is not shy about talking up its AR smartglasses plans. The latest missive comes from two executives in charge of developing AR software and hardware. As far as we know, Amazon doesn't have plans to make AR smartglasses yet (and audio-only smartglasses d ...more

A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque se ...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

The older I get, the more my Friday nights involve watching Netflix at home with a bottle of Maker's Mark and a box of Oreos. Netflix is a big part of my life, and I'm not alone. YouTube and Netflix make up over 50% of all activity on the Internet, so it might be worth your ti ...more

Your iPad has a superpower that iPhone models don't and probably never will have (even though they could) — one that will make you want to take your iPad with you everywhere you go from now on. While it's not a hidden or secret feature, it has eluded many iPad owners. Most of ...more