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 ...
USC Games announces first student games expo
Wednesday, April 18, 2018 by Richard Harris
USC Games announced that its inaugural USC Games Expo will take place on May 9th, presented by Los Angeles-based mobile games company Jam City, a developer of mobile games like Cookie Jam, Panda Pop and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. The event will provide a hands-on look at the future of interactive entertainment, showcasing games and innovations created by the next g...
Mobile website or mobile app, the changing tides
Tuesday, April 17, 2018 by Richard Harris
Programming with native mobile languages has been the keystone way of producing a rock-solid mobile app since the beginning of the mobile app stores, and there’s good reason. After-all, programming as close to the hardware layer as possible is usually your safest bet, and using the language the manufacture fully supports will get that job done with less headaches.But in...
GDC 2018 breaks attendance records
Monday, April 2, 2018 by Richard Harris
The 2018 Game Developers Conference (GDC) ended after a week of networking, learning and inspiration. This year, the event saw a record attendance of 28,000 industry professionals at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center from March 19-23. GDC and VRDC will be returning to the Moscone Convention Center on Monday, March 18 to Friday, March 22, 2019. The call for submi...
DeveloperWeek 2018 roundup
Thursday, March 22, 2018 by Badri Rajasekar
DeveloperWeek 2018, held recently in the SF Bay Area, is part of the largest series of completely developer-focused events in the world, with conferences also held in New York and Austin. It is a testament to the fact that “software rules the world” that around 8000 developers turned up for various parts of DeveloperWeek, which included a large two-day Hackathon, a fren...
GDC 2018 is better than ever
Tuesday, March 20, 2018 by Richard Harris
The 2018 Game Developers Conference (GDC) kicked off its 32nd edition at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Adding to GDC’s lineup of lectures, tutorials, roundtable discussions and networking events, GDC 2018 will feature the Vision Track, a series of mini-keynotes designed to provoke and inspire, which will be presented by speakers including Supercell’s C...
Upskill closes in on $17.2M from investors
Tuesday, March 13, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Upskill has announces that it has raised $17.2 million in new capital to support increased growth and product development. The funding round adds new investors including Accenture and Cisco Investments, as well as continued participation from Boeing HorizonX, GE Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and other industrial-focused investors.This latest financing build...
AR app from The Red Cross shows the devistation of war
Thursday, March 8, 2018 by Richard Harris
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has unveiled “Enter the room,” an augmented reality experience for iOS app users. In a narrative told through the eyes of a child, the free app provides a visceral, first-person experience of war at a family’s doorstep. Entering through a portal on the screen of their device, users see the brutal impact of years of fig...
Mobile marketers should use video more report finds
Tuesday, March 6, 2018 by Richard Harris
YouAppi has announced the results of its second annual CMO Mobile Marketing Guide, which highlights opportunities for mobile marketers over the next 12 months. Video emerged the clear winner, with 85 percent of marketers planning to increase their investment in video during 2018, up a full 10 percent from 2017. Over three-quarters of respondents cited video as very or c...
Developers outlook 2018: big technologies, big changes
Tuesday, March 6, 2018 by Jason Thane
In 2018 changes in the technology landscape are creating fantastic opportunities for innovation in design and engineering. For decades, computers featured a TV screen for output, a keyboard for text input, and a mouse to point and click. Just a few years ago, the iPhone transformed everything by putting the first well-designed computer with a touchscreen in our pockets....
Bitcoin job skills are hot says latest report
Monday, February 12, 2018 by Richard Harris
Upwork has released its newest quarterly index of the hottest skills in the U.S. freelance job market. The Upwork Skills Index ranks the site’s 20 fastest-growing skills in a quarterly series that sheds light on new and emerging skills as an indication of hot freelance job market trends. According to a recent study, 57.3 million Americans (36 percent of the U.S. workfor...
Overstock executive named co-chair of VRARA Retail Committee
Friday, January 12, 2018 by Christian Hargrave
Months after Overstock.com, announced the launch of its augmented reality (AR) feature within its iOS shopping app, the organization’s senior vice president of software engineering, Amit Goyal, was named as the chair to VR/AR Association (VRARA)’s global retail and e-commerce committee. Along with Goyal’s responsibility as chair, he will serve as president of the newly ...
Oracle weighs in on chatbots for enterprise developers
Tuesday, December 5, 2017 by Richard Harris
From self-service to instant payments, the chatbot industry has seen great things from the latest advents in the field of AI. That's why we sat down with Oracle to learn more about how with all these new changes in the messaging industry enterprise can see the value that can be attained by adoption.We recently had a conversation with Suhas Uliyar, Vice President, A...
Women Who Tech launches competition for women startup founders
Monday, December 4, 2017 by Richard Harris
Women Who Tech has announced the launch of Women Startup Challenge: Emerging Tech, a pitch competition to showcase top early-stage women-led technology startups focused on Augmented Reality, Blockchain, IoT, Space and Robotics, Transportation, Biotech, Virtual Reality, Energy, and Agriculture tech. Aimed at closing the gender gap in the tech sector, the startup challeng...
Umajin Immerse just launched
Monday, November 20, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Umajin Immerse has announced the launch of Umajin Immerse, a development platform that includes 3D, Digital Agents, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), offline mapping and simplified and secure provisioning of enterprise data resources. The platform is used to drive innovation and digital transformation for enterprises, allowing rapid deployment of digital pro...
ViroCore launched to build immersive AR apps
Friday, November 17, 2017 by Richard Harris
Viro Media has announces the launch of ViroCore, a SceneKit equivalent for Android enabling native AR/VR development using Java. ViroCore supports ARCore, Google Cardboard, Daydream and Gear VR.With ViroCore, Android developers can now build immersive standalone AR/VR apps or add features like Snapchat’s Lenses into their existing apps using familiar languages and tools...
Developing in AR with Thyng
Monday, November 6, 2017 by Richard Harris
Augmented reality (AR) has gotten a lot of attention of late, with Apple and Google respectively launching ARKit and ARCore to help mobile app developers embrace AR. Well-known brands like Ikea and Strava have deployed ARKit apps, and many app developers are contemplating building AR elements into existing apps or coding new AR apps from scratch.In Chicago, startup Thyn...
Learning ARKit for the average iOS developer
Monday, November 6, 2017 by Angela Yu
Augmented Reality is not new and developers already have tools to create augmented reality (AR) apps. But with Apple’s brand-new ARKit, we’re going to see a massive shift in the landscape as this new framework simplifies the process of building AR experiences for iPhone and iPad. With ARKit in their arsenal, developers are presented with a golden opportunity a...
Using ARKit to provide a mobile content experience
Thursday, November 2, 2017 by Roman Taranov
With the launch of iOS 11 came a variety of new features - the most prominent being ARKit. As defined by Apple, "The basic requirement for any AR (Augmented Reality) experience - and the defining feature of ARKit - is the ability to create and track a correspondence between the real-world space the user inhabits and a virtual space where you can model visual content." A...
AutoMobility LA hosts 2017 Hackathon to tackle LA congestion
Thursday, October 26, 2017 by Richard Harris
The LA Auto Show and AutoMobility LA has announced plans for its 2017 Hackathon, sponsored by Honda Innovations. The Hackathon, which will be hosted by AutoMobility LA for the first time, will take place over a period of 24 hours, November 27-28 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.For this year’s Hackathon, developers will be asked to tackle the transportation and mobi...
Crossfield Digital talks sports apps and feature creep
Thursday, October 26, 2017 by Richard Harris
Crossfield Digital, a New York headquartered development stsudio, is a member of the RSE Ventures family of companies. Crossfield boasts clients like the International Champions Cup, Red Bull Global Rallycross and Bleacher Report, but is equally experienced with entrepreneurs in a broad range of industries who are trying to build exciting new products. Last month, ...
Creating apps for iPhone X with newly opened doors
Tuesday, October 17, 2017 by Evan Rosenbaum
Over the past ten years of new iPhones, Apple has introduced features - some with little fanfare and others as marquee parts of the new phones - which cause a seismic shift in user behavior. Shifts in user behavior create opportunities for app developers to create enduring brands and experiences.The Apps of TomorrowAn analysis of some of these features and the enduring ...
Automotive startup competition 2017 finalists
Monday, October 9, 2017 by Richard Harris
The Los Angeles Auto Show (LA Auto Show) and AutoMobility LA has announced the finalists for its 2017 Top Ten Automotive Startups Competition (Top Ten) presented by Magna International, Inc. Selected from nearly 300 applicants, these innovative finalists were chosen based on a number of different criteria including the potential to greatly impact the daily transportatio...
ARCam augmented reality App launched by Cheetah Mobile
Tuesday, October 3, 2017 by Richard Harris
Cheetah Mobile Inc. has announced their latest app, ARCam, which allows users to create a 3D moment by inserting augmented reality features into photos and videos. ARCam was built on Apple’s ARKit introduced with iOS 11 and is available now for download at ARCam App Store.“ARCam is a new, streamlined app that allows people to have more fun with their phone camera than e...
AR and deep neural networks collide to provide ModiFace
Thursday, September 28, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
ModiFace has announced a new live video based hair tracking and hair color simulation technology utilizing a deep neural network architecture. The new deep learning architecture utilizes a set of collaborative neural networks to detect hair in each video frame and to adjust the coloration of hair in a photo-realistic way. The implementation also utilizes the latest mach...
Mira raises $1M for their AR headset Prism
Monday, September 25, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Mira has recently raised $1 million Seed Plus funding round led by Greylock Partners, Founders Fund Angel, and Macro Ventures, bringing Mira’s total funding raised to date to $2.5 million. The additional funding will be used to provide more resources to the burgeoning developer community and bolster Mira’s content partnership initiatives. Additionally, Mira announced th...
Shopping in AR is the future says Overstock
Thursday, September 21, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Overstock.com, Inc. will be launching augmented reality (AR) within the retailer’s iOS shopping app. Shoppers using a cell phone or tablet with iOS11 can launch the AR experience directly from the retailer’s app, which features true-to-life-size 3D models, giving shoppers the most accurate representation of the product as possible so they can see exactly how it will fit...
What the iPhone X and iOS 11 mean to app developers
Tuesday, September 12, 2017 by Richard Harris
The excitement of Apple launch day always reminds me of the Willy Wonka “opening of the gates”, you know - where the public gets a peek inside Apple's secret factory for a brief moment. But this year the Apple event feels a bit different. Maybe it’s the recent leaks, maybe it’s because we all know Apple is facing a ceiling of innovation they have to punch through - and ...
Mobile GPS Tracking app Chirp GPS launches 3.0
Monday, September 4, 2017 by Christian Hargrave
Chirp GPS, the professional mobile GPS tracking mobile app and website used by hundreds of thousands of professionals, has announced that the long awaited version 3.0 is now available for download in the Apple app store and Google play store.The update comes after a year in research and development, and through watching how users engaged with Chirp GPS in their daily li...
Google ARCore SDK releases Unreal Engine support
Friday, September 1, 2017 by Richard Harris
Google has announced ARCore, bringing augmented reality (AR) functionality to Android smartphones. Developers can immediately get started with Google’s developer preview of ARCore, which also includes Unreal Engine support. ARCore enables AR development across Android ecosystem, giving developers the ability to make compelling AR experiences without the need for any add...
