Spark AR gets new tools
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 by Brittany Harris
Spark AR is releasing some of the most-requested creator tools and capabilities — Target Tracking, Native Slider, Actions and Templates for Spark Studio — for Instagram.
Since Spark AR opened publishing on Instagram earlier this year, we’ve seen an amazing response from our creator community. These new tools and capabilities offer more options for c...
New app for marathon runners
Friday, November 1, 2019 by Richard Harris
New York Road Runners in collaboration with its title sponsor, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), launched the official race app for this year’s TCS New York City Marathon. With its extensive enhancements, the award-winning app creates a best-in-class experience for runners and spectators at the world’s most technologically advanced marathon, occurring on Nove...
Open source Mixed Reality (MR) application for Microsoft HoloLens
Tuesday, September 3, 2019 by Freeman Lightner
The President of Feel Physics developed an open-source Mixed Reality (MR) application for Microsoft HoloLens.The interactive app helps students to visualize and intuitively understand the magnetic field.
With a Microsoft HoloLens headset on, the app visualizes the magnetic field in 2D or 3D by showing a red-blue bar magnet through the center of compasses needles. Stu...
Temenos acquires Kony and strengthens its leadership team
Friday, August 30, 2019 by Richard Harris
Temenos, the Switzerland-based banking software company, has agreed to acquire Kony, Inc., the digital banking SaaS company, for $559 million and an earn-out of $21 million, subject to regulatory approvals.
The acquisition enhances Temenos’ scale and capabilities in the US, adds significant digital expertise, and accelerates Temenos Infinity, the b...
Harry Potter Wizards Unite event coming to the city of Indianapolis
Tuesday, July 2, 2019 by Brittany Harris
Niantic, Inc. and WB Games, in collaboration with the City of Indianapolis, announced the first ever real-world event for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, the hit augmented reality (AR) mobile game played by millions of wizards and witches around the world, will be coming to Indianapolis from August 31 - September 1. The Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Fan Festival will take pl...
CBS partners with Unity to provide an AR ad solution
Monday, July 1, 2019 by Richard Harris
CBS Interactive has partnered with Unity Technologies to offer advertisers the ability to build and scale augmented reality campaigns across a wide range of CBS Interactive’s mobile apps, including CBS Sports, CBS News, CNET, GameSpot and TV Guide.
“Through the introduction of new ad formats like AR, we are continuing to create meaningful moments for CBS ...
Why AR advertising is hard
Friday, June 21, 2019 by Richard Harris
To mark the second day of Cannes Lions Advertising Festival of Creativity 2019, Unity Technologies, the company powering more than 60% of all AR and VR content and serving more than 11B ads each month, has revealed the results of an independent research project on the state of the Augmented Reality (AR) advertising and marketing market in 2019. Unity surveyed approximat...
ThirdEye has a new developer program
Monday, June 10, 2019 by Richard Harris
ThirdEye Gen who creates augmented and mixed reality (MR) enterprise solutions, and is the creator of the super-small MR glasses (called X2) is now one of the first companies to offer a unique partnership opportunity for individual developers or large AR/VR software companies.
After recognizing the need for more financial accessibility and support am...
3D and AR in ecommerce from Overstock.com launches
Tuesday, May 28, 2019 by Richard Harris
Overstock.com, Inc. recently launched an omnichannel 3D and augmented reality (AR) experience in e-commerce, expanding its 3D models from its award-winning mobile apps to mobile web, reaching 100 percent of the retailer’s mobile users. This AR functionality will also be available on Overstock’s desktop site as early as this week.
Building on Overstock&rsq...
Everything Unity said at GDC 19
Thursday, March 21, 2019 by Brittany Harris
Unity Technologie's keynote at GDC 19 was filled with new technological breakthroughs and partner announcements that showcased everything that developers need to create, operate and monetize for today and tomorrow. Key partners and customers from Tencent, Activision, Glu Mobile, and NVIDIA joined Unity to set the stage for a week filled with hands-on experiences, op...
VR gaming with computer vision assisted audio coming
Thursday, March 21, 2019 by Richard Harris
In a paper to be presented at the IEEE VR Conference in Osaka Japan, researchers detail how they developed a computer-vision system that takes two images from off-the-shelf 360° cameras and uses AI to understand the acoustics of the user’s environment. This allows spatial audio to intelligently adapt to the user’s environment and produce a more immersive...
AuGames partners with kathy ireland Worldwide to produce AR for brands
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 by Richard Harris
AuGames has partnered with kathy ireland Worldwide (kiWW), a company founded in 1993, to produce augmented and merged reality (AR/MR) experiences, for both consumers and kiWW partners, to act, interact and react within a range of the kathy ireland brands and products. The partnership aims to provide an innovative and immersive experience by creating one of the...
By 2020 you'll be watching sports with AR over 5G report says
Thursday, February 21, 2019 by Richard Harris
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the world’s largest network operators plan to use augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) or a hybrid of these technologies, supported by 5G, to offer richer viewing experiences to fans, both at sports stadiums and watching at home. Promising speeds up to tens of times faster and lower latency than 4G, 5G opens up the possibilities ...
Augmented reality app creation made simple with PlugXR
Thursday, January 10, 2019 by Richard Harris
PlugXR, Inc., an Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality/Mixed Reality Silicon Valley startup based in San Jose, California (USA), has announced its flagship AR Authoring Platform, PlugXR Creator (Beta), the Fastest and First-of-its-kind AR App Creator for Android/iOS mobiles to develop powerful AR apps in Minutes.
"We expect to expand the XR market starting with AR...
Mesmerizing Titanic virtual reality game coming to PlayStation
Wednesday, December 26, 2018 by Richard Harris
Titanic VR is launching on Playstation (PSVR). The highly realistic game’s graphics and characterization are based on real-life people who were on the ship. The game's developer, Immersive VR Education (IVRE), created 800 characters, while also providing various facts on-screen about the RMS Titanic and its sinking.
The sinking of the Titanic is ...
Transforming industries with photoenabled apps
Monday, December 24, 2018 by Jindou Lee
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, which is probably why there are thousands of mobile apps designed to help users capture, send and discover images of what’s important to them. Ever since the first smartphone slid off the assembly line, photos have been an essential feature of mobile marketing and social media. But while consumer-facing tools have...
Best gifts for programmers, developers, and nerds 2018
Friday, December 14, 2018 by Richard Harris
Why is it so hard to buy something for techie people? It’s probably because they seem to just “get” whatever they want at the moment the need arises. Programmers, developers, and designers can be some of the worst about it too, because a lot of what we need to have just to do out jobs, falls in the category of a gift to ourselves too. Yeah - I rea...
Software architecture in 2019
Wednesday, December 12, 2018 by Richard Harris
Software is increasingly becoming more complex, and dealing with the changes happening in the software industry every day is something all developers, especially software architects, need to pay attention to.
While software architecture isn't anything new - the speed of mobile undoubtedly has put critical elements of creating software outside of the main focus fo...
Testing your app for the holidays
Tuesday, November 27, 2018 by Eran Kinsbruner
It’s almost the most wonderful time of the year and retailers of all sizes have already been busy preparing - and in some cases bracing - for the upcoming surge in traffic that is expected to hit their websites and mobile shopping apps this holiday season. Salesforce is predicting that mobile devices will drive 68 percent of all holiday shopping traffic this year,...
Here's why AR is not ready for industrial use
Monday, November 19, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Retriever Communications announced the results of a study it commissioned with the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) sharing deeper insight into the design of industrial-grade augmented reality (AR) software and hardware.
The goal of the study was to identify heuristics that will aid designers and developers in the creation of hands-free technologies for field s...
ARena Space VR parks coming to America
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 by Richard Harris
At the international exhibition IAAPA Attractions Expo, the virtual reality provider ARena Space will present the format of the new generation VR park. The event will be held in the world capital of theme parks, in the city of Orlando (USA). IAAPA Attraction Expo is the largest event for employees in the entertainment sector, where companies from all over the world demo...
Sam's Club Now is opening with no cashiers and putting mobile first
Monday, October 29, 2018 by Richard Harris
Sam's Club has said they are real close to opening a new store centered around mobile and scan-and-go technology in Texas - it's called Sam's Club Now. It aims to be a mobile-first shopping experience, similar to Amazon Go stores, powered by the new Sam’s Club Now mobile app, where your entire shopping experience from browsing to pa...
Unity Ads SDK 3.0 come to game developers
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 by Richard Harris
Unity has just launched the latest version of their Ads SDK, and it’s a doozy. The new Unity Ads SDK 3.0 introduces personalized placements, as well as two new ad formats: Augmented reality and Banner ads.
Personalized placements are particularly noteworthy. Now in open beta, personalized placements tie ads and in-app purchases into the same auction, serving th...
The differences between web apps and native apps
Thursday, October 18, 2018 by Richard Harris
Even in 2018, years past the origional question, the debate rages on across the land, in office spaces and conference rooms every day - should we build a full-blown native mobile app, or is distributing over the web good enough?
By now everyone knows the “mobile-first” mentality because statistics like 50% of web searches being done from a mobile dev...
Game developers get the WRLDS SDK for free
Monday, October 15, 2018 by Richard Harris
WRLDS, the company that develops smart toys and platforms for connected play, announced the release of a new software development kit (SDK). The SDK will be free and easy to use and will give game developers a completely new medium to work with: an augmented reality (AR) and bluetooth-enabled connected ball with a bounce return rate of more than 70 percent.
&ld...
iOS 12 development tips from a highly rated instructor
Thursday, October 11, 2018 by Angela Yu
While this year’s iOS update was not accompanied by visual overhauls, the latest version of the most advanced mobile operating system is designed to make everyday tasks on iPhone and iPad faster and more responsive.
If you are a developer, you’re in luck. Some of the latest features deliver faster ways to get things done by providing the ability for any a...
Mobile app success rate in question
Wednesday, October 3, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Nearly 90% of app developers and marketers (88%) say their app has made money and is a financial success, according to a new survey from The Manifest, a business news and how-to site. Meanwhile, only 10% of businesses say their app has not been a financial success, and 2% do not know if their app has made a profit. Experts, however, doubt the validity of this high succe...
Edge computing research reveals key nuances
Thursday, September 13, 2018 by Richard Harris
In early 2018, the AT&T Foundry launched an edge computing test zone in Palo Alto, CA to experiment with emerging applications upon this new network infrastructure paradigm. Edge computing is the act of moving storage and processing capabilities to the perimeter of the network - or geographically closer to the end-user. As next-gen applications require increasing pr...
Wayfair CTO on experimentation at scale
Tuesday, August 28, 2018 by John Mulliken
Fans of street art will recognize the work of Shepard Fairey, the artist whose depiction of Andre the Giant made waves in 1989. His most iconic work is his portrayal of Barack Obama as “Hope,” which dominated the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and propelled his artistic endeavors into mainstream scrutiny.
Fairey was an early believer in the power of scal...
A designer's guide to mobile AR and VR
Thursday, August 16, 2018 by Paul Reynolds
When most people think of 3D user experiences, their mind goes straight to headsets - Oculus Rift for VR, for example, and Hololens for AR. But for designers and developers, that mindset changed dramatically last summer when Google and Apple released their mobile AR platforms - ARCore and ARKit, respectively. Almost overnight, these platforms swung the center of gravity...
Smart ball game converts data from the ball into usable game events
Wednesday, August 15, 2018 by Richard Harris
WRLDS announced the release of a new augmented reality (AR) and Bluetooth-enabled smart ball and platform. The ball is made of a lightweight, bouncy material and has a built-in chip to control mobile games, giving “tween” players healthy new ways to engage in active, outdoor play by essentially turning the whole world into a game.
“We wanted to brid...
Swace wants to save social media engagement
Tuesday, August 7, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Social media services platforms are seeing a massive boom in audience growth, but users still don’t like how these platforms use their data to make money. Brand engagement on social networks has steadily decreased, despite greater investments to gain user attention. A new solution is here to disrupt the status quo of social media brand engagement in a completely n...
AR on the web too!
Wednesday, July 25, 2018 by Erik Murphy-Chutorian
Augmented Reality belongs online. To date, AR has primarily been confined to the app store, but there’s a growing group of visionary developers and companies that have figured out that by “AR-ifying” their products for the web, they win in a larger number of more satisfied and enthusiastic users and customers.
At the moment, we’re seeing an ex...
Change human body features from head to toe with this app
Wednesday, June 13, 2018 by Richard Harris
Manipulating video in real time is difficult - especially if you are editing features of the human body such as making someone taller, or more skinny. LIKE - the video creation and social app just released a new feature that is touted as the first augmented reality and artificial intelligence mobile video effect, called Shaping Magic. The new feature, available for free...
A developer's guide to catch the next big smartphone wave
Wednesday, May 2, 2018 by Magnus Jern
The recent news from Gartner on the first ever global decline in smartphone sales was a question of when, not if, the sizzling market for smartphones would finally cool down. In fact, the 5.6 percent decline in end user sales during Q4 2017, compared to Q4 2016, is probably best understood as a healthy sign of a successfully mature market. It’s not unlike previous eras ...
