The process of trying out new augmented reality and virtual reality hardware is as personal as it gets. Bottom line, if you can't directly try these immersive devices on, it's difficult to really understand the benefits they can bring to your life and work. That's why the Covid-19 pandemic has presented a particularly tricky challenge to the many AR/VR hardware makers around the world looking to mainstream their products in a new world in which nearly everyone has, understandably, become a bit of germaphobe. • Don't Miss: Microsoft Debuts HoloLens 2 Industrial Edition for Pharmaceutical... more

When we're young, learning a new language is as easy as learning anything else. There have been ample studies that show adults struggling to learn a new language are not alone. Learning a new language is hard, particularly when done outside the guidance of a teacher or a school setting. To help you through the difficulties of learning a new language and launch you into fluency, there is the Rosetta Stone: 1-Yr Subscription (Unlimited Languages), now only $99.99. The Rosetta Stone 1-Year Subscription gives you access to more than 24 languages that you can switch between at your convenience... more

You should feel relatively safe to watch and post videos on TikTok, but like with any online service, you're always at the mercy of hackers. It's unfortunate, but anyone can become a target for arbitrary reasons. Maybe your TikTok videos are controversial. Maybe someone has a personal vendetta against you. Maybe your credentials ended up on a brute-force wordlist from a data breach and some black hat randomly picked your account. Maybe you have an in-demand username that somebody wants to steal and sell on an underground market. Don't Miss: How to Stop Creeps & Other Users from Downloading... more

Among the various components of the emerging augmented reality space, the most lucrative is the advertising market. The prospect of turning every object, every location, ever signpost in the real world into a discount code or virtual transaction interface is why AR will ultimately be more profitable than VR. But as the foundations of this new era are being laid, some are rushing to secure their space via technological and legal means. The latest is Seek, a Utah-based company that recently secured an AR patent that could fundamentally impact hundreds of companies in the years to come. • Don't... more

Apple released the third public beta for iOS 14.5 today, Wednesday, Mar. 3. The update introduces a new "Items" tab in the Find My app that hints at the company's long-rumored "AirTags," a new Apple Watch icon when unlocking your Face ID iPhone with your watch, as well as small UI updates. This public update follows 21 hours after Apple seeded developer beta 3, which was an event in itself. Apple seeded the developer beta via restore image only, meaning developers could not update OTA (over-the-air). Then, the company pulled the update entirely, before quickly seeding it again, this time with... more

We use our smartphones every single day. They're a part of our daily routine, and as a result, we've gotten really good at using them — especially when it comes to typing very quickly. But just how fast can you type on your iPhone? Can you match your speed on a physical keyboard for your computer or tablet? You might just surprise yourself. Thanks to better on-screen keyboards, predictive text, autocorrect, and other on-screen typing features — as well as years of experience with a smartphone — many people can type faster on an iPhone than on a physical keyboard. According to a 2019 study... more

While Touch ID has been a part of the iPhone's legacy since 2013, Apple waited until 2016 to add biometrics to its MacBook lineup, and it's not as impressive. An iPhone with Touch ID can register up to five fingerprints, but Macs can only register a maximum of three per account. If that seems unfair, there's an easy trick to doubling that number, meaning six of your fingerprints could unlock your laptop! When we say "easy," we mean easy. There are no utilities to download, no Terminal commands to mess with, and it doesn't take a macOS power user to squeeze more functionality out of Apple's... more

Apple released the third developer beta for iOS 14.5 today, Tuesday, Mar. 2. The company promptly pulled the update from the developer portal, before finally making it available for all shortly after. The update was surprising to begin with, since Apple released it at an unusual time, and was only available as a download from the dev portal, without any OTA option. The update comes two weeks after the company seeded developers the second 14.5 beta, and 13 days after public testers received their second 14.5 update. Apple initially released this developer update just past 1 p.m. PDT, not the... more

Wireless headphones are convenient, comfortable, and more common than ever before. With the massive proliferation of wireless earbuds, it's hard to identify which ones are good and which ones just want to look like they're worth the price. Avanca T1 Bluetooth Wireless Earbuds are high-quality wireless earbuds with excellent functionality and a low price of $29.95 now that they're 50% off. Avanca T1 Earbuds will let you enjoy all your favorite songs, podcasts, and audiobooks with comfort and ease. Bluetooth 5.0 will connect automatically to your phone and begin providing a clear, powerful... more

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for virtual and remote collaboration, and Microsoft has a solution that may serve as the catalyst for more such apps for augmented and virtual reality in the near future. During the keynote for the company's virtual Ignite event on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and technical fellow Alex Kipman unveiled Microsoft Mesh, a mixed reality platform that leverages the Azure cloud platform to facilitate shared collaborative experiences between remote participants via HoloLens 2 and other devices. Don't Miss: 10 Remote Collaboration Apps for... more

URL tracking codes: you'll see them on almost every link you copy online to share with friends and followers. It could be tens or hundreds of extra characters appended to the end of a URL, which websites and marketers use to tell how you got to the link in the first place. These excess tracking tokens not only make the links you share look sloppy and spammy — they could even invade your privacy. The Problem with URL Tracking Codes Tracking codes could be unique to each website for their own internal purposes, or they could be Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters. Many sites and marketers... more

The average business person likely recognizes Epson for its printers or even its projectors, not the futuristic AR wearables. Yet it is Epson's experience with projection technology that has enabled the company to compete in the enterprise-grade smartglasses game, with its latest models in its Moverio smartglasses line carrying noticeable gains in display capabilities. The newest model, the Moverio BT-40, is a standalone device that connects to a smartphone, tablet, or PC via a USB-C connection, and retails for $579. Its sibling, the Moverio BT-40S, comes with a touchscreen-equipped... more

The new WandaVision series is perhaps the hottest TV show on the Disney Plus streaming service since...well, its own The Mandalorian wrapped up its second season late last year. Now, after publishing AR experiences in partnership with Google to promote the latter, Disney has tapped the AR camera effects of Facebook Messenger to hype up the former as the season (and, perhaps, series) finale is set to drop on Friday. Don't Miss: The Best Marvel Movie Scenes Featuring Augmented Reality Concepts That We Might Use in the Near Future The newly Marvel-powered app is available in the camera effects... more

Introduced in iOS 10, the "Memories" feature in Apple Photos aims to give you fun snapshots of events, people, pets, and more from over the years. However, if you don't really care about these auto-generated slideshows, then you probably don't like getting notifications for them, either. Whenever you get fed up with receiving these unwanted alerts, there's an easy way to turn them off. Blocking notifications for Memories in iOS or iPadOS won't disable notifications altogether for Photos — it will just block the annoying Memories alerts. Go to Settings –> Notifications –> Photos –> Memories... more

You know just how great your products and services are. Now it's time to let the rest of the world know. Of course, that's easier said than done. You're probably competing with bigger, more established brands that can afford to spend their way to the top. You can make it a fair fight with a little SEO optimization. Research has shown that 68 percent of all online experiences start through a search engine. The fact of the matter is, the vast majority of people will never make it off the first page of search results. So getting yourself high up in the search results is key to success. All you... more

If you've wanted to get into Wi-Fi hacking, you might have noticed that it can be pretty challenging to find a safe and legal target to hack. But you can easily create your own test network using a single ESP8266-based microcontroller like the D1 Mini. Our goal is to crack a handshake that we capture from our wireless card. So what we'll do here is flash an Arduino sketch onto an ESP8266-based board that allows us to play both sides of a Wi-Fi conversation, simulating a device joining a Wi-Fi network. From our computer, we'll listen for the attempt to join and then try to crack the password... more

The Lens Studio creators have published more than 1.5 million AR effects to Snapchat. One of them is Audrey Spencer, who shared her story with us and provided her insights into Lens Studio as a storytelling device. Meanwhile, Snap has added new capabilities to the platform to stoke more creativity from its creators. In AR wearables, Samsung, perhaps prematurely and maybe accidentally, illustrated its vision for smartglasses and spatial computing via leaked concept videos. At Mobile World Congress Shanghai, tech giant Qualcomm and one of its hardware partners, Nreal, each revealed new AR... more

Have some sensitive information you need to share with somebody on Telegram but are worried it might fall into the wrong hands? You don't have to worry anymore because Telegram now sports a way to automatically delete all new messages in any chat of your choosing, not just end-to-end encrypted ones. Telegram's "Secret Chats" already features a "self-destruct" option that can erase messages from both ends of the chat after a certain period of time. While that feature is undoubtedly great, it's limited since it doesn't work for your regular threads. Sometimes, if not most of the time, you just... more

You're in a Zoom meeting, and you're click-clacking away at your keyboard, typing important notes from the call. More realistically, you're doing something unrelated to the meeting, such as browsing the web, playing a game, or messaging friends. Whatever it is you're typing, if your microphone is on, everyone on the Zoom call will be able to hear the sound of you typing. You could always manually turn off your mic when needed, but if you constantly need to switch from speaking to listening to writing things down, having to mute and unmute yourself can get real annoying real quick. With all... more

The Lens Studio app has become a cornerstone of Snap and its augmented reality technology portfolio by giving developers, creatives, and novices the ability to create augmented reality camera effects for Snapchat. One reason for this is Snap's steady and frequent iteration of the platform's capabilities, and the latest round looks to greatly expand what the Lens Studio community can do with the tool. Don't Miss: Snapchat Spooky AR Experiences from Lens Studio Creators Get You Ready for Halloween On Thursday, Snap released Lens Studio 3.4, which adds improved hand tracking, full-body... more