For months, consumers have been itching to know whether it will be Samsung or Apple that has the first in-screen fingerprint scanner in their next smartphone. Now, reputable researcher Jiutang Pan has taken to Weibo to report that the answer is neither.
If you thought the selfie would only ever be used to bombard your feed on Instagram, you were wrong. Dead wrong. JetBlue is looking to take those selfies and use them to check you in for your next flight.
The common thread between this week's Brief Reality stories is that augmented reality is beginning to prove its worth as a technology that improves workflows and processes. From customer service to healthcare to manufacturing, augmented reality is helping companies improve productivity.
If OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei was trying to be slick about using the new OnePlus 5 phone — especially before its speculated summer release — well, he didn't do that great a job of hiding it from us.
Beware: After a new caucus — the Congressional Caucus on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Technologies for the 115th Congress — formed in the US House of Representatives, the government has decided to go after all mixed reality head-mounted displays. The HoloLens, Magic Leap — nothing is safe anymore.
When will the drama end? The lawsuit between Waymo and Uber is back in the news with no signs of stopping. Today the court denied yet another request from Uber to shield itself with the fifth amendemnent, securing a small victory for Waymo.
One thing you don't see often in the driverless industry are partnerships. When automakers are in the news together, it usually means drama. However, an important partnership between Nissan and Mobileye was announced today. One that has the potential to make driverless cars on the road better and safer.
Over the past eight months, ten infants at UC Irvine Medical Center tested positive for the same strand of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Despite the danger of this superbug due to its high resistance to most antibiotics, this information was only released to the public on Thursday. Thankfully, all ten babies survived and are currently healthy.
Although John Chen of BlackBerry still sees Qualcomm as a partner, the chip maker and telecommunications company has just been given a preliminary order to pay BlackBerry $814,868,350 in royalty overpayments.
As with any new smartphone (but especially with Apple), the iPhone 8 is generating rumor after rumor. This newest rumor, however, rocks the boat a bit, as BGR reports that the iPhone 8 may release at Apple's standard time in the fall, but the 3D camera will be pushed to the 8s.
Just like in the Spy Kids 3D movie, US soldiers may soon upgrade their mission planning from 2D to 3D. Welcome to the wonderful world of augmented reality, US Army.
Lyft is experimenting with commuter ride sharing by debuting a new "Shuttle" option, which offers pickups and drop-offs along select routes, much like a metro bus would do. The company is trying out the new option in San Francisco and Chicago, but if all goes well, we might all be ordering a pickup soon through Lyft's new Line ride share option.
While augmented reality is mostly in the minds of consumers in the form of Pokémon GO, AR has been popular behind the scenes, with AR companies marketing it as a tool to help business operations become more efficient. This business-to-business market is the target of the new app DOTTYAR, which "provides 3D visualization tools for augmented reality viewers."
Baidu Inc, the "Chinese Google" search engine and technology company, which has been actively pursuing self-driving cars, reported that a gang of hackers recently attempted to steal its driverless car technology.
The Washington Post believes augmented reality adds an extra layer to stories, and they're doubling down on that belief by adding in new AR features into their already popular "rainbow" news (iOS and Android) and Classic (iOS and Android) news apps.
One of the disadvantages of the digital world is that you can't pick it up and touch it. While that can feel like less of a problem in virtual reality, where you're already holding controllers, mixed reality environments—like the one you'd experience in Microsoft's HoloLens—suffer from a lack of physical connection with the digital objects that appear in your real world. Dexmo aims to solve that problem with a relatively intimidating new controller that encompasses your hands.
Graeme Devine, Chief Creative Officer at Magic Leap, spoke at the Games for Change festival about how mixed reality will change the world for the better. While we might need to take our own magic leap to believe in his utopian future, he hinted at a solution to the impending problem most of us fear: a cluttered, endless nightmare of ads.
We're already glimpsing the future when we look at mixed reality through a headset, but is the real evolution of this technology something that will exist as part of our bodies? As intense as that may sound, TechCrunch's Jay Donovan offers compelling reasons why it's not such a crazy idea:
The interwebs is a great source of information, but sometimes said information is not always legit. That can be frustrating when it comes to making fun food, costumes, and arts and crafts for Halloween, like this bowl of "bloody" gummy worms.
For the most part, nobody makes money off of Facebook. Sure, some people make a living by updating pages for businesses and celebrities, but hardly anyone gets a dime from the site itself.
In the aftermath of the unindicted police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, we've been told that the system worked as intended. When our legal system's outcome is at conflict with what a majority of Americans believe is just, it's clear that some changes are needed. But what specifically needs to change? And what can an average citizen with a moral and just cause do to prevent these kinds of tragedies from repeating themselves again and again?
After closing its office last year, enterprise AR company Daqri has moved on to the final stage of its lifecycle with the liquidation of its assets.
Some of the leading big tech companies are still working in the lab on actual products, but at least some of their leadership did have some thoughts to share on the future direction of the technology this week.
When Google introduced the Call Screen feature with the Pixel 3, I had never been more excited to get a Pixel device. This AI feature provided real protection against rising spam and robocalls, which billions of people deal with each year. After a recent update to the feature, you can reduce robocalls and other spam calls to nearly zero.
Months after Next Reality broke the story surrounding the financial troubles at Meta Company, there's a new update in the company's ongoing patent lawsuit.
Last month was a whirlwind for the augmented reality industry, with the Augmented World Expo, Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, and an exciting Magic Leap Twitch livestream all wrapping up before the ides of June. Now that we've had a chance to fully digest it all, we have a real sense of where the augmented reality industry is heading.
Augmented reality is really picking up steam as a tool for marketing departments to pitch their products.
The Augmented World Expo is winding down in Santa Clara, where Qualcomm, Vuzix, and Meta Company were among the companies making big announcements.
One of the better additions in the stock Android launcher is the Google Now page. Residing to the left of the home screen, this page presents a host of information based on the user's interests, which Google bases on analyzed data. Recently, the Google Now page design received a makeover which Nova Launcher users can now enjoy.
The price tag for the Microsoft HoloLens might be out of range for the average consumer's budget, but for enterprises, like BAE Systems, adopting the AR headset is yielding a return on the investment. And for those with even slimmer wallets, Best Buy just made the Lenovo Mirage, part of the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges package, more affordable.
Modern "mad men" are buying into augmented reality for marketing, with the two latest examples being trendy burger maker Bareburger and department store chain Zara.
In any business, there are a number of questions companies must answer in order to get customers to buy a product or service. The same holds true for companies selling augmented reality headsets.
Prior to Apple's earnings report on Thursday, the storm clouds were gathering as Wall Street prepared for bad news in the wake of reports of slower iPhone sales. But it turns out that those fears were mostly unwarranted. Apple managed to increase iPhone revenue during the December quarter, despite selling slightly fewer phones.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the first big tech event of 2018. This year, if the early news is any indication, augmented reality could be the big star of the show.
The narratives around virtual reality consistently revolve around human empathy and emotion, while the story around augmented reality has been decidedly more dispassionate and business-focused — until now.
For those who thought the action in Pokémon Go was a bit too pedestrian, Father.io wants to recruit you for a multi-player, first-person shooter that unfolds on the streets of your own city.
Transparent display maker Lumus has reached a deal to license its augmented reality optical engine models to Quanta Computers for mass production of displays for consumer smartglasses.
With technology giants like Apple and Google finally entering the fray, the move toward mass adoption of augmented reality is ramping up. Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore will allow entirely new categories of apps to be made. Unfortunately, in a world of heavy competition, getting these two frameworks to work together wasn't a priority for either company.
When iOS releases in the next few weeks, consumers on both iOS and Android operating systems can expect to see more AR ads in the mobile web browsers thanks to Vertebrae, an advertising platform for immersive media.
If you've accidentally turned on "Read Receipts" for all of your iMessages, there's an easy way to disable it so that no one knows when you're actually reading their incoming messages. You could also pick and choose which conversations can see that you've read their messages if you don't want to kill the feature entirely.
