While most people were worried about having the scariest costume when I was younger, I was always more interested in the candy. While everyone wasted time trying to perfect their costume, I was busy mapping out every detail in my city, finding the most efficient way of getting ...more
Greeting cards. Everyone hates buying them, they're way overpriced, and the majority of them go right in the trash after they're opened. So why do we still buy them? If it's the thought that counts, you're much better off going with something handmade. You can personalize it ...more
Whether you want to use it to keep your guests safe or just to see who's the most drunk, it's always fun to have your own breathalyzer at a party. We've seen DIY breathalyzers before, like this one by Craig Smith, but how about an Arduino breathalyzer? Engineering student Dan ...more
While I am a writer with a degree in Creative Writing, I haven't published any Steampunk fiction. However, as a panelist and track director, I've been on panels with many well-known Steampunk writers and have gleaned insight from the things they've said. I've compiled some of ...more
The next phase of the holographic display is upon us, and Looking Glass is aggressively making sure that it's at the tip of the spear when it comes to leading that charge. On Tuesday, the Brooklyn, New York, and Hong Kong-based startup unveiled the latest in its product line, ...more
Business cards are a great way to keep tabs on the contacts we network with. So why shouldn't our smartphones make them even more useful? Enter Google Lens, which will help you save, search, and expand on the contact information found on all of the business cards you've collec ...more
If you're someone who loves to read, you've probably read a book that made you want to hop into the story and live in the world that wasn't your own. Reading has a way of letting us escape into other worlds and experience things that we normally wouldn't be able to. Augmented ...more
Augmented reality is quickly becoming a popular tool for marketing use cases, as demonstrated by new projects serving the automotive, entertainment, and tourism industries this past week. Blippar Cranks Up Automotive Recognition to Deliver AR Content Last week, Blippar intro ...more
The drama continues! In the latest installment of the feud that has rocked the driverless vehicle industry, Waymo is now accusing Uber of withholding a secret LiDAR device. As we know, LiDAR sensors map objects in 3-D, bouncing lasers off real-life surroundings that allows au ...more
We used to saunter into the grocery store and gaze longingly at the pre-made roasted chickens, wistfully thinking of things we could do with the golden fowl if only we didn't already have dinner plans. You see, we used to grab them only if we were having company or knew we wo ...more
A cup of ginger tea with lemon first thing in the morning, a pick-me-up cup of green tea (or matcha) to fight off the afternoon slump and a soothing cup of chamomile tea to help me unwind before bed—I would be lying if I said I weren't a major tea enthusiast. Don't Miss: Gree ...more
So, how does someone keep their hacking life completely secret? What This Is: I'd like to know how hackers keep their hacking life secret. So with a bit of experience and knowledge obtained from elsewhere I want to share what I know, and also ask a few questions to become ev ...more
Christmas trees, once decorated and brightly lit, are the penultimate holiday decoration, but authentic pines lose their brilliance fast without any nourishment. Plus, they are major fire hazards without regular hydration. But watering one requires a lot of sliding around on t ...more
When it comes to squeezing as much battery life as possible out of our smartphones, most people aim for software solutions, or ones that can otherwise be easily managed right from the touchscreen. Managing Wi-Fi and data connections, fine-tuning screen brightness, and install ...more
Hello! This post is not about craft, it's about cyber bullying. If you ever had such an experience, that an unknown hacker was bullying you for no reason at all, please follow my words. Thank you! Step 1: Let All the People You Know That Your Are Being Harassed. Hacking is th ...more
People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the out ...more
Why do you need augmented reality? Because enterprise, they say. And while that's certainly true for several disciplines, there's still that mainstream use case hanging out there waiting for users to discover beyond the realm of enterprise and gaming. After much thought — and ...more
While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials. No matter if you've ...more
As was mentioned by the great OTW last week, TOR, aka The Onion Router, has had its integrity attacked by the NSA. In an attempt to reduce the anonymity granted by the service, the NSA has opened a great many nodes of their own. The purpose is presumably to trace the origin of ...more
The last few weeks were fairly busy in the realm of augmented reality and remote meetings developments. Most of that activity was generated by some mammoth announcements from Snap and its Spectacles AR smartglasses, and Google, with its Project Starline experimental holographi ...more
The entire wireless industry is working overtime to convince the world that 5G, and the higher prices associated with the faster speeds it affords, will not only be worth it but will deliver never-before-seen wonders. But few companies have produced such a stunningly well-done ...more
Samsung's new line of Galaxy S20 flagships have a water resistance rating of IP68. This means you don't have to worry as much about getting the phones wet, but there's a limit to that. The IEC standard 60529 outlines a series of tests performed by the National Electrical Manu ...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
Life can get busy. Between work, school, and all the extracurricular activities, weekly chores like making a grocery list can get pushed to the back burner. But with a little help from the Google Keep app for Android or iPhone, you can at least make one thing easier. Say your ...more
While iOS 13 might have made waves for some of its more prominent features — most notably system-wide Dark Mode — some of the more interesting tools lie with its smaller, unannounced updates. One of those updates is a new Reminders setting to tag contacts in a to-do task so th ...more
While The New York Times' augmented reality section has largely been dormant in 2019 (so far), USA Today has continued to crank out AR news stories. On Monday, the news outlet published a feature story about the world's tallest buildings (and the recent lack of new skyscraper ...more
New images reveal that Microsoft is already well underway in fulfilling its $480 million contract to provide augmented reality headsets to the US Army. The Army Futures Command recently gave CNBC a preview of the Integrated Virtual Augmentation System (IVAS), which is compris ...more
You don't have to be a frequent flyer to know how indispensable navigation apps have become. Many of us rely on these apps for traveling from state to state and getting around in foreign cities, but even more of us count on these apps to beat rush hour traffic and find the qui ...more
On Sunday, Apple CEO Tim Cook (the number one person on our NR30 list) made a rare television appearance to talk about and show off his current obsession: augmented reality. In a segment on the new HBO documentary news series from Axios, Cook invited two of the site's journal ...more
With HoloLens and its enterprise-focused software offerings, Microsoft continues to make an impression on companies looking to adopt augmented reality, with Toyota Motor Corporation among the latest. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Nikkei Asian Review that Toyota is now ...more
Users on Instagram have taken the app's new "Questions" sticker and run with it — it's tough to find a story in your feed that doesn't proudly sport "Ask me a question." However, it appears there's some confusion when it comes to the anonymity of your answers to these question ...more
Futureplay has soft-launched Battle Bombers Arena, giving mobile gamers a refreshing twist on MOBA by infusing it with simple but addicting gameplay based on the console classic Bomberman. Though only available in select European countries, this game can be played on your iPho ...more
A controversial video from Magic Leap's past has once again surfaced, but this time it comes with a lot more credibility and a good bit of excitement around the Magic Leap One headset. New Zealand's Weta Workshop has revealed that it will release the game "Dr. Grordbort's: In ...more
After receiving many requests for the feature, Signal introduced read receipts last year to its mobile apps. However, some users don't like the idea other people knowing when they've read messages. Luckily, Signal lets you disable this feature and reclaim a little privacy. Re ...more
During our last adventure into the realm of format string exploitation, we learned how we can manipulate format specifiers to rewrite a program's memory with an arbitrary value. While that's all well and good, arbitrary values are boring. We want to gain full control over the ...more
If you want your own lightsaber, you don't need to be a Jedi or have kyber crystals in your possession; now, thanks to augmented reality, all you need is an iPhone and a rolled up piece of paper. On Wednesday, app developer 2020CV released InstaSaber on the iOS App Store. The ...more
Face ID is possibly the iPhone X's make-it-or-break-it feature. Apple is asking previous iPhone owners to put a lot of faith into their home button replacement, and so far, the results seem pretty good. That is until CNN tested the security feature with identical twins. It's ...more
ARKit and ARCore generate excitement among various segments of the tech industry for spurring adoption of augmented reality with consumers via mobile devices. The consensus among many experts, though, is that the future lies within augmented reality headsets, and that the ent ...more
Another day brings another Apple ARKit demo, this time for a first-person role playing game that inserts villagers, vendors, and villains into real world locations. Finnish developer Lauri Rustanius shared a series of videos via Twitter for a game called Genereal World that i ...more
For as long as 14,000 years, the First Nations people of the Heitsuk Nation have made their home along the Central Coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia. Among the territory's inlets, islands, rivers, and valleys lie a clay deposit on the north side of Kisameet Ba ...more
BMW seeks to hire 2,000 engineers for its driverless program ahead of the launch of its iNext Level 3 model in 2021, a source close to the company told Driverless. According to the source, BMW hopes to boost the number of its driverless-related workforce, most of which will b ...more
Disasters can happen at any moment, and when they do, it's often hard to find the right information to help you get to safety as quickly as possible. The internet is helpful for finding out safety information, but with so many people posting about it at the same time, it can ...more
The Sharknado franchise is, somehow, releasing a fifth movie "Sharknado 5: Global Swarming" (groan) next month. In anticipation of the film's release, the company has decided to create an augmented reality mobile game called, prepare yourself, "Sharknado: ShARkmented Reality". ...more
Every morning I head on over to my gym to start storying away classes full of people dripping in sweat. This always makes me feel super awkward because it's not exactly the most photogenic time to take a picture, and if it was me, I would probably give that person a dirty look ...more
Furniture shopping is about to get a whole lot easier thanks to Apple's AR Kit and Ikea. In an exclusive with Bloomberg Businessweek, Tim Cook, Apple CEO said: We've talked to Ikea and they have 3D images of their furniture line. You're talking about changing the whole exper ...more
Traces of bacteria at a precinct in East Harlem created an all-out scare after doctors diagnosed an NYPD officer with Legionnaires' disease, a deadly infection caused by Legionella pneumophila. Officials told officers at the precinct not to shower there until the source of th ...more
Several recent research studies have pointed to the importance of the microbes that live in our gut to many aspects of our health. A recent finding shows how bacteria that penetrate the mucus lining of the colon could play a significant role in diabetes. The new study led by ...more
From Farmville to selling a company to Google, Amitt Mahajan has been through the startup ringer. Now, as managing partner with Presence Capital, he's funding the future of augmented and mixed reality. With interest in 3D graphics, Mahajan started his career working on game e ...more
Apple staff will be put through their paces now that the company's "Automated System" for driverless cars is in motion. Earlier this month, it emerged that the notoriously secretive Apple received a permit from the California DMV, which costs a small fee but requires at least ...more
Amazon has been toying with the idea of opening physical retail stores for some time now, even opening old-fashioned bookstores in select locations and teasing cashier-less convenience stores. But the online retailer has some new ideas in the works, including implementing virt ...more
Facebook Messenger has now incorporated a live location sharing feature, one week after Google Maps revealed its own real-time location tool. On Monday, the social media giant announced the new feature, which will allow users to share their live whereabouts with friends at the ...more
The culprit probably wasn't what doctors were expecting when a 57-year-old man in Hong Kong came to the hospital. The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit in critical condition. A clue to the cause of the infection would lie in the man's profession—he was a butcher. ...more
In the past, infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) commonly led to dementia as the virus made its way to the brain. Even in effectively treated people, HIV can hide out and replicate in places like the brain, where it's tough to detect. That's why it's very concern ...more
Today, at Abundance 360, an exclusive event for tech entrepreneurs in Beverly Hills, California, Boston Dynamics unveiled a video of "Handle," a humanoid-like robot with wheels instead of feet. Abundance 360 is founded by Silicon Valley tech veteran Peter Diamandis and descri ...more
Starting in October, many Nexus 6P users have been experiencing a bug that causes their phone to completely shut down, even though there was 20% or more battery life remaining. At first, it was thought to be a direct result of the recent Android Nougat update, but a combinatio ...more
Every recipe on the face of this planet (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration there) ends with the same six words: "Add salt and pepper to taste." And so, we've dutifully followed those asinine words: at the end of everything cooked, we add a bit of salt, we add a few cracks of ...more
Okay, check your Food Safety guidelines at the door, because things are about to get real subjective in here. It's late at night, and you've just stuffed yourself to the gills with that large pizza that you ordered—for one. Yeah, maybe it was a little gluttonous on your part, ...more
I'm sure I'm not the only one on here that has googled "Why am I always tired?"... and I'm definitely not alone when I say that all of the advice I've found so far is useless: Go to bed early. (Wow, you think?) Don't skip meals. (Real talk: if I skip meals, it's under extreme ...more
I'll admit it: I ignore expiration dates. No matter if it's a sell-by date, "best if used before" date, or even a use-by date, I don't care. I just check for signs of food decay and keep on eating. Not everyone is as lax as I am about expiration dates, though. Some people tos ...more
Microsoft's HoloLens has many applications in the business world, both large and small, but what about gaming? Initial demos gave the impression that we could expect amazing first person shooters, platformers, and even Minecraft. Yet, as Newsweek noticed, the HoloLens was nowh ...more