Speak Scene

Let's face it— most people don't understand Shakespeare's language. If they say they do, they're probably lying. The poetic words of the world's most famous playwright continue to plague school children and college lit. majors alike, but not anymore. SparkNotes, one of the on ...more

Snapseed is a highly regarded and award-winning photo-editing app for iOS devices. Originating out of image manipulation specialist Nik Software in San Diego, Snapseed is Apple’s iPad App of the Year and, after using it for the purposes of this review, I believe it points to t ...more

Synopsis: Tell one guy that a girl that one of the other guys knows just had some sketchy demonic encounter/satanic experience at some Wicca gathering she went to last night while she was trying to get answers from the past. Then say she’s incredibly creeped out right now and ...more

Competition was fierce. Tensions ran high. National honor and pride were at stake. 354 competitors from 24 countries. 30,000 visitors. Fibreglass tip and overlay. Gel sculpture. Fantasy nail art. Acrylic nail sculpture. The art of the manicure is nothing to poke fun at. Empha ...more

Who doesn't love Star Wars? No one, that's who. And if you love Stars Wars, logic would follow that you like lightsabers, so central are they to the tale's mythology. It's part sword, part laser, and makes a sound like a humming motor have multigasms. If I saw one in real life ...more

What's more fun? Winning against your friends or winning against others with them? It's an age old question, and in video games, the former one-on-one multiplayer has been the norm. But cooperative multiplayer has made a comeback, with Halo and Diablo II starting the trend, th ...more

L.A. Noire is the newest Rockstar (GTA4, Red Dead Redemption) game created by Team Bondi ( The Getaway). The game is set in the late 1940’s in Los Angeles. The main character, Phelps, is a war veteran rising through the ranks from police officer to detective. The game is prese ...more

Imagine you're in Paris and you need to get to Versailles. Looking around for directions, you come to a cold realization—you do not speak a lick of French! How are you going to get to Versailles and what happens if there is a detour? It will be a difficult struggle, and you'd ...more

A game labeled as 'educational' usually spells its death among hardcore gamers. The educational game genre is mostly intended for children, and games that appeal to children often lack the sort of widespread appeal that makes them commercially successful. Many people play gam ...more

Minecraft is unique among computer games in that some users have created such breathtaking works of beauty and ingenuity that it challenges the very idea that Minecraft is even a game at all, but suggests that it is instead a tool for artistic expression much like Photoshop. ...more

One could argue that, at least for the moment, software development is more important to the augmented reality experience than hardware. Since a viable augmented reality headset has yet to emerge for the broader, mainstream consumer market, currently, the same devices that mak ...more

I got my first Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance bulbs because they're the consensus best of the best for colored lighting. But after spending 90 bucks on two light bulbs, when it came to all the accessories like switches and buttons, I went with cheaper third party options ...more

With augmented reality comes an infinite realm of possibilities for storytelling. We have seen it through wineries telling their history with interactive AR experiences and through authors that use augmented reality to bring portions of their books to life. However, filmmaker ...more

In a time when messaging platforms may outnumber the people you'd ever want to message, one of the more popular options—Facebook Messenger—received a big update for both Android (must be part of the free beta program) and iOS, going from version 5.0 to 6.0. Starting today, yo ...more

Let's say that you've got the look down, and you have your Steampunk props all ready to go. Congratulations! You're a Steampunk! But now what do you do with yourself? You can sit there, patting yourself on the back, but that gets lonely after awhile. Your props will look nic ...more

People say that money makes the world go 'round. And it's no different in the world of augmented reality. If there are any doubts about the future of the AR industry, it doesn't seem like many venture capitalists or corporate investors share those doubts. According to Digi-Ca ...more

If you've been to a convention of any sort before, you know that there are good and bad panels, and that their inherent goodness or badness often has little to do with the actual content being discussed. That's because giving a panel is a skill that not everyone has. However, ...more

Unless you've been totally off the grid, there's a good chance you're aware that the Disney Plus streaming video service launched this week. And, if you're on this site, you're likely salivating over the new Star Wars series, The Mandalorian. But did you know that the service ...more

Musical theater enthusiasts are about to enter a whole new world of melodic storytelling via augmented reality. Immersive production company Wilkins Avenue, along with its Pollen Music Group, is debuting the first-ever AR musical through the spatial computing lenses of the Ma ...more

Now that the NCAA Basketball Tournament is underway, 7-Eleven has decided to launch an augmented reality experience to remind basketball fans where they can quench their thirst throughout March Madness. Available until April 10 in the 7-Eleven app for iOS and Android, the pai ...more

The Pixel 3 has an indisputably great camera, but a software update coming soon is going to make it even better. Google will be adding a "Night Sight" shooting mode that's so good with low-light situations that you'll have to see it to believe it. XDA highlighted a port of th ...more

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

Department store chain Zara is temporarily ditching its mannequins and dressing up its stores with augmented reality experiences featuring virtual versions of real fashion models. Rolling out to 120 of its flagship stores worldwide, customers inside and outside the stores can ...more

Just a day after the release of the iPhone X, the music-meets-comedy pastime known as Animoji Karaoke quickly emerged as one of the popular (albeit frivolous) features used to justify spending $1,000 for Apple's newest smartphone. Now, that brilliant idea has been taken to th ...more

While Siri came up on the scene with hardly any competition back in 2011, Google Now has not only caught up to Apple's intelligent personal assistant, but also excelled in certain areas—with its ability to quickly answer questions, give recommendation, and even deliver informa ...more

The wait is finally over. Apple just released iOS 13.2 for iPhone, the latest update to this year's iOS 13 release. The update contains a slew of exciting new features, such as Deep Fusion for 2019 iPhones, a suite of new emojis, the long-awaited Announce Messages with Siri, a ...more

While Magic Leap has remained mostly silent regarding its plans for its Magic Leap One successor, the software team continues to makes strides with improvements to the device's Lumin OS and SDK. In version 0.97 of Lumin OS, arguably the biggest change is the graduation of Map ...more

Augmented reality is expected to eventually change everything, and the prevailing view is that those changes will be for the better. The converse view, however, is that the technology will further erode privacy. A new Netflix film called Anon, starring Clive Owen and Amanda S ...more

The Google Pixel was just knocked off its pedestal as DxOMark Mobile's best smartphone camera, courtesy of the HTC U11. Ouch ... The tech giant's throne was usurped when DxO gave the HTC device a score of 90, saying the device was " the highest-rated smartphone camera we have ...more

Have you ever wanted to control a swarm of robots? Well, now you can! Robotics researchers at New York University (NYU) have created an app which controls 'bots from your smartphone, using augmented reality. This AR app would certainly come in handy when you want to make a cof ...more

Sony has upped the ante for the promotion of Smurfs: The Lost Village, which was released on April 7 in the US, with a mixed reality experience via Microsoft's HoloLens. The experience in question is actually a children's game, and was created by media agency OMD and AOL's Pa ...more

Our brains do a magnificent amount of work to process visual stimuli, but they aren't difficult to fool. Optical illusions can trick our minds into believing what we're seeing is real, even if it's not—and virtual and mixed reality technologies take advantage of this little lo ...more

2011's The Artist was the first silent film to win an Academy Award since 1927. It was old school versus new school, and it won in unprecedented fashion. You don't have to be a hipster to appreciate silent films, and when it comes to Halloween, being a silent film actor makes ...more

The next big iOS version for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch was revealed by Apple at WWDC 2018 and dropped for everyone on Sept. 17, 2018, less than a week after Apple revealed the new iPhone lineup. We've rounded up all the big picture items and secret features and changes we c ...more

As the year comes to a close, we've invited some of the leaders of the AR industry to take the time to look back at the progress the AR industry has made while looking forward to what's ahead in 2020. A report on the top apps of 2019 — and the decade — also offers some insight ...more

Apple's iOS 13 has been available for beta testing since June, and the stable release pushed out to everyone on Thursday, Sept. 19. To help you make the most out of iOS 13 for iPhone, we've rounded up everything you'll want to know, whether a colossal feature, small settings c ...more

Now that the augmented reality cat is out of the bag, Magic Leap is beginning to open up a bit more about how of some of its work came together in the years and months leading up to the Magic Leap One's release earlier this month. On Wednesday, the company unveiled a behind th ...more

There are a lot of exciting improvements in store for Siri in iOS 11. Apple showed off some of the highlights at WWDC, but there are five changes in particular that you don't want to miss. From a new voice to a cool on-device learning feature, this Siri update could have a pr ...more

Virtual reality is all the rage these days, especially with devices like the Oculus Rift, Gear VR, and HTC Vive hitting shelves lately. But before any of those fancy, expensive headsets ever made it to the market, Google came up with a thrifty and inventive substitute in the f ...more

As Android's de facto virtual assistant, Google Now lets us speak directly to our phones in plain English to answer our questions and perform many basic tasks. With the app open, just say "Okay Google," then wait for the beep, and ask almost any question. But several Google N ...more

Apple just seeded developers and public beta testers the GM (golden master) for iOS 14 on Tuesday, Sept 15. The update (18A373) comes just after Apple's "Time Flies" event, and six days after Apple released iOS 14 beta 8 for both developers and public testers. Apple released ...more

By now, you've probably already seen Andy Serkis and his performance capture demo for Magic Leap. And sure, marrying motion capture acting and augmented reality sounds compelling, but how does it really work as an experience? A few days ago, I had a chance to find out, thanks ...more

A few long-awaited iOS 11 features that Apple had promised way back in June 2017 have finally made their way to iPhones with the iOS 11.4 update. Aside from finally delivering on those, there's not a whole lot new in iOS 11.4 as a whole, though, there are a few things you'll d ...more

I had the opportunity to speak with the COO of Osterhout Design Group, Pete Jameson, shortly before the announcement of the company's R-8 and R-9 smartglasses models at CES in January. And while I sadly could not make it to CES to test the smart specs out right away, ODG invit ...more

When Microsoft release an update to the HoloLens Development Edition at the end of May, there were a bunch of cool new features added in. Among them: New voice controls that make working in the HoloLens operating system much easier. There are tons of new ways to interact with ...more

Up until the last 15 years or so, watching the commercials during the Super Bowl was arguably more exciting than the game itself. Super Bowl XXIV featured the San Francisco 49ers blowing out the Broncos, 55-10, in the worst Super Bowl beatdown of all time. The game might not h ...more

Taste is certainly relative. When you look at Central American architecture and notice all of the bright pastel colors, then move just a thousand or so miles to the north and see that buildings in the United States are mostly painted in earth tones, this becomes abundantly cle ...more

Apple has four iPhone models for the remaining months of 2020, but the most impressive ones are the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. While the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini are great smartphones, the "Pro" models offer more advanced features, especially for photographers an ...more

Apple's iOS 14 is here. With it, you'll see over 200 new features and changes hit your iPhone, including home screen widgets, inline replies in Messages, and cycling routes in Maps. Here's how you can get your hands on the brand new update. Apple released iOS 14 to compatible ...more

San Francisco-based augmented reality company Scope AR has made building AR instructional content for mobile devices and AR wearables as easy as throwing together a PowerPoint deck, primarily via its WorkLink platform. For its next trick, ScopeAR has packaged its platform int ...more

You watched the live stream, pored over the specs, and are now super excited for the Google Pixel 4. But specs don't tell you everything. After using the Pixel 4 XL for over a week now, we've found several things you wouldn't know without getting your hands on the phone. Most ...more

The rise and fall of Meta, the Silicon Valley-based augmented reality startup that looked to challenge the likes of Microsoft's HoloLens, and others, took just six years. Now, as the story of the company draws to a close, we finally have some deeper insight into what exactly ...more

In a previous tutorial, we were able to measure vertical surfaces such as walls, books, and monitors using ARKit 1.5. With the advent of vertical plane anchors, we can now also attach objects onto these vertical walls. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to make your augmented ...more

As we aim for a wireless world, technology's reliance on cloud computing services is becoming more apparent every day. As 5G begins rolling out later this year and network communications become even faster and more reliable, so grows our dependency on the services offered in t ...more

It finally happened! In a world of "go big or go home," Magic Leap has finally done something other than tease us with vague promises and rendered video concepts. Although, other than actually showing us what the developer's kit will look like, it seems little more than a slig ...more

If preorder delays are any indication, the iPhone X certainly has some buzz. But does the X have the quality to support that buzz in the long run? After all, a $1,000 (or more) iPhone feels more like an investment than a smartphone purchase. The question on any prospective buy ...more