The promise of augmented reality when it comes to gaming is the conversion of the player's real-world environment into a virtual playground. Army of Robots, available for $1.99 in the App Store for ARKit-compatible devices, gives us a tangible example on how the promise could ...more
CEO (and NR50 member) Tim Cook and Apple unveiled the long-awaited lineup of next-generation iPhones today on stage of the Steve Jobs Theater, packed with hardware improvements to facilitate AR experiences from ARKit, which will arrive with the iOS 11 on Sept. 19. The new iPh ...more
The standing desk movement has gained momentum over the past few years as research has pointed to the detrimental health effects of sitting at a desk all day. For those who are ready to take the plunge into this new paradigm, standing desk vendor Varidesk has a mobile augment ...more
A Jedi does not seek adventure or excitement, but Star Wars fans can seek Jedi with the Find the Force augmented reality scavenger hunt promoting the launch of merchandise for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Between Sept. 1 and 3, participants are tasked with finding Find the Force ...more
Wise Snacks wants baseball fans to reach for potato chips instead of peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and it's calling augmented reality out of the bullpen to close the deal. The snack maker has partnered with two Major League Baseball teams, the Atlanta Braves and the New York Met ...more
YouTube is a giant platform — over 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute. It can be difficult to keep track of your favorite videos in such a chaotic sea of content. Difficult, but certainly not impossible. Let's say you want to start a collection of the funniest video ...more
Pinning a tweet to your profile is a fantastic way to get people to view and engage with your most important content on Twitter. In fact, it could very well be the best way to improve your overall Twitter strategy. Think about it: Every time someone visits your profile page, ...more
With so many companies announcing news or demonstrating technologies at the Augmented World Expo 2017, it can be a challenge to see it all. In fact, we are still unpacking some of our in-depth on-site coverage. So, this edition of Brief Reality is focused on the news we did no ...more
With the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) banning laptops and tablets on flights originating from 10 international airports, and the United Kingdom taking similar precautions, international travelers are faced with hours of non-productive — or far less entertaining — f ...more
LOOOK, a Seattle-based mixed reality and development studio, can now peer into the future with their new geotechnical engineering visualization application for Microsoft HoloLens. Developed in partnership with BCG Engineering, a geotechnical consulting firm based in Vancouver ...more
In February, the popular Facebook-owned WhatsApp Messenger service jumped on the "stories" bandwagon and replaced their in-app, text-based "About Me" status (you know, those lovely little messages where you can say "Sleeping" or "Not Sleeping" under the tiny nub of your profil ...more
While there are many uses for augmented reality in the automotive industry, adoption has been slow. With the plethora of makes and models on the road today and rolling off assembly lines tomorrow, developing and deploying knowledge bases that utilize augmented reality to deale ...more
In December of last year, UK-based Zappar successfully raise $84,356 for their ZapBox mixed reality headset—over $50,000 more than their goal. Well, they just blew that sum out of the water when they announced this morning that they've closed a Series A round of funding with $ ...more
Considering that Google makes Android, it's rather strange that the operating system doesn't have a baked-in solution for doing a reverse image search. Sure, you can long-press pictures in Chrome to search for other instances of a photo, but it's not possible with pictures you ...more
It looks like Chris Urmson has spent the six months since he left Google's Self Driving Car Project trying to build a get-rich-quick self-driving unicorn, along with Sterling Anderson, formerly with Tesla Motors. At least that is one of several scandalous accusations in a Tesl ...more
In December of last year, Australian Feliks Zemdegs broke the human world record for solving a Rubik's Cube with a time of 4.737 seconds. Well, this robot did it way, way faster by solving one in under 1 second. Don't tell me a robot takeover isn't real possibility. Video: . D ...more
As a commercial and potentially consumer product, one might assume it very unlikely to see the Microsoft HoloLens in the military marketplace. And that assumption would be completely wrong. One company from the Ukraine is currently working on using the mixed reality head-mount ...more
We tend to think of Google Play as Android's app store—but there's far more to it than that. Not only does it allow you to purchase apps and games, but you can also buy movies, music, books, and even devices, plus there's always those pesky in-app purchases that it also handle ...more
When you think of all the fun and games smartphones have to offer, it's easy to forget that they also make a great tool for getting things done. With utilities like document scanners, calendars, to-do lists, office apps, and password managers, that little computer you carry ar ...more
If you've ever prematurely dismissed all of your push notifications before you got a chance to read each one, you know how annoying it can be to dig through all of your apps to try and find the one with the missed notification. Android does have a built-in notification histor ...more
A lot of things have been changing over at Microsoft recently. Not only did they acquire the ever-popular Android keyboard SwiftKey and give away Windows 10 for free, but they've started a Google X-like experimental division called Microsoft Garage, and they've actually releas ...more
For people that like to get things done, Android's home screen widgets are almost indispensable. Rather than packing your launcher with a bunch of icons, you can utilize widgets to get quick information in a beautiful package or provide one-tap access to a particular functiona ...more
In case you didn't know, Android has an awesome hidden settings menu called "Developer options" that contains a lot of advanced and unique features. If you've ever come across this menu before, chances are you just dipped in for a minute so that you could enable USB debugging ...more
Apple revealed the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus at their September 9th event, and there are two particularly awesome features built in just for selfie photogs. The first is 3D Touch, which gives you a quick shortcut to taking selfies just by pressing the screen in a certain way. ...more
I have a personal rule when it comes to an app's interface: If it doesn't follow Android's design guidelines, it was probably written with Apple's iOS in mind first and foremost. And if that truly is the case, I almost take this as a personal insult. I'm not a second-class ci ...more
Depending on your child's age, their first smartphone may be a little too open for them, or you, to handle. With essentially a world of information—both good and bad—available at their fingertips, it can seem like a huge hurdle to instill parental controls on their device. Th ...more
Windows 10 marks a new era for Microsoft with the return of the Start menu, the demise of Internet Explorer, and the introduction of the remodeled Windows Store. While the new Windows Store is meant to bridge the gap between every device running Windows 10, many apps have yet ...more
Malware often disguises itself inside of seemingly non-malicious files, such as installer packages, where it can then gain root access to your computer to track activity or steal your information. While your Mac does a good job of protecting you, thanks to built-in features l ...more
Apple has once again improved functionality of Siri, their personal voice assistant for iPad and iPhone, in iOS 9—and this update is a big one. You can now use Siri to find photos based on location and date, set up contextual reminders, find your friends and family, and more. ...more
There is no built-in way, or any options in the iOS App Store, to customize the vacant top half of the screen that appears when the newer Reachability feature is triggered in iOS 8. However, there are many Reachability tweaks for jailbroken iPhones, one of which lets you use t ...more
Since Apple released iOS 8, many third-party apps have taken advantage of one of its more resourceful features: Notification Center widgets. These widgets have made it easier to interact with features and settings that would otherwise require launching an app itself, instead o ...more
Google has updated its Search application for iOS with their new Material Design aesthetic, taking cues from Android's redesigned look with refreshed colors, depth effects, and new animations. But the update doesn't stop there; there are several new and useful features added t ...more
Social media is constantly evolving, and as a result, we're now capable of sharing much more than we were even just a few years ago. Television, on the other hand, continues to hold strong as one of America's favorite pastimes. The folks over at Didja TV have brought these tw ...more
If you're anything like me, you rely heavily on your calendar to keep on track throughout the week, month, and year. While Android's built-in Google Calendar provides an excellent cloud-based solution for keeping our schedules properly maintained, it's not perfect. If you wan ...more
The Billboard Charts have been a measurement of commercial success for pop songs since roughly the time that radios became a household item. In its modern form, Billboard ranks the sales and performance of all singles with its "Hot 100" chart, as well as many other genre-speci ...more
It's time to enjoy one of America's longest lasting favorite pastimes. No, not baseball—pranking our friends! With the internet currently overrun with countless pictures and memes of cats, there's no way for your feline-hating friends to surf the web without coming across a ki ...more
Facebook knows who all of your closest friends and family are. When you backpacked across Europe last summer, they went along on the trip. Remember that break up two years ago? Yeah, they were there. The breakfast you ate this morning? They probably have a picture of it. They' ...more
Private Browsing mode finally lives up to its name in Apple's huge Safari 17 update for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. So whether you search for things you don't want anybody to know about or want to ensure websites and trackers aren't eavesdropping on your activity, you'll want to up ...more
Apple's iOS 15.4 update for iPhone is out after 46 days of beta testing, and it has some exciting features you won't want to miss. Here's everything you need to know about the new software. The iOS 15.4 software has been available to developers since Jan. 27, 2022, and public ...more
It's already been a banner year for mergers and acquisitions in the augmented reality industry, with WaveOptics and Ubiquity6 among the notable companies acquired. Two of the more active M&A players, Snap and Epic Games, continued their respective buying sprees this week with ...more
In the event of an emergency where you can't answer for yourself, trained professionals can view your Medical ID on your iPhone to learn about your medical situation, granted that you have created one. But that's not all your Medical ID can do. With a new feature, iOS can shar ...more
The words of three of tech's most important executives in the last 48 hours are providing some valuable insight into the near term future of augmented reality and the cloud infrastructures that support it. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Snap CEO Evan Spiege ...more
Staying alert to directions and changing the music you're listening to on your smartphone at the same time can be cumbersome, but Google Maps wants to fix that. One of the mapping service's features allows you to control music playing on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play M ...more
While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents. Speaking of GDC, Epic Games used its pulpit at the conference to announce a new fun ...more
As Microsoft continues to bask in the glow of its HoloLens 2 unveiling and begins ramping up the hype to launch, Nreal and Vuzix are carving out their own niches in the AR hardware landscape. Nreal continues to make waves with its forthcoming tethered smartglasses, and its fo ...more
As I've mentioned in recent days, it was refreshing to discover that Microsoft's HoloLens 2 stage production was every bit as accurate as presented (check out my hands-on test of the device for more on that). But beyond watching Microsoft's deft HoloLens 2 stagecraft, and try ...more
In the last couple of days there's been a lot of speculation about the powers of Microsoft's HoloLens 2, but few have had a chance to get their hands on one to see if the company's claims live up to what HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman showed off on stage. Nevertheless, amid th ...more
The emerging narrative as CES begins is that consumer-grade smartglasses require a heavy compromise in functionality in order to arrive at a form factor and price point that appeal to mainstream customers. China-based startup Nreal is ready to subvert those expectations with ...more
This week, inside sources divulged details of how Apple nearly acquired Leap Motion, twice. Otherwise, companies offering or working on augmented reality technology had more successes than failures to talk about. For instance, the AR industry's courtship with the fashion worl ...more
With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding ...more
The dream of Google Glass lives on via North's stylish and normal-looking smartglasses that bring text messages and navigation prompts into the user's field of view and Amazon Alexa integration for voice-activated assistance. After the company formerly known as Thalmic Labs t ...more
Apple's latest mobile operating system for iPhones, iOS 12, was released to everyone Monday, Sept. 17, and it's the same exact build that developers and public beta testers received as the "golden master" on Sept. 12, the day of Apple's 2018 special event. Install it to start ...more
If you're on the hunt for a profitable side-gig, or even a completely new way to to make money, you'll want to take a look at Upwork, a leading freelancing platform that connects skilled freelancers with clients from all over the world. Upwork allows you to build your own onl ...more
The transcribing app can be an invaluable tool, especially if you're a student or are in a profession that relies on audio journals or interviews. These apps can convert important recordings like lectures and meetings into text for you to carefully read through to better compr ...more
As the official release of iOS 12 nears closer each day, Apple continues to update its betas. The company released the fourth beta of the upcoming software to developers Tuesday, July 17, exactly two weeks after the release of the third developer beta which came out just a few ...more
When you drive along the deceptively sedate streets of Silicon Valley, there are few hints that all those nondescript office parks and low-rise buildings contain the very future of the planet, but they really do. On a recent trip to tech's epicenter, I found that out firsthand ...more
Google Lens is a fantastic addition to Google Photos for Android and iOS that allows your smartphone to identify a number of things in your pictures, like landmarks and contact info. Using this power, you can even find out how to buy almost any product you've taken a photo of ...more
Ever notice how some augmented reality apps can pin specific 3D objects on the ground? Many AR games and apps can accurately plant various 3D characters and objects on the ground in such a way that, when we look down upon them, the objects appear to be entirely pinned to the g ...more
Whether it's for your company, your professional image, or just your personal account, making a poll on Instagram is a great way to reach out to followers, friends, family, and other users to measure their thoughts and opinions about any given topic. Instagram for Android and ...more
In a LinkedIn post published on Tuesday, Microsoft's leading advocate for the HoloLens made a prediction that the mixing of immersive technologies will define augmented reality in 2018. Alex Kipman, the Technical Fellow for new device categories for Microsoft's Windows and De ...more