New Posts
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How To: Check Your Android Security Patch Level to See if You're Protected Against the Latest Vulnerabilities
Numerous potential exploits are found for every operating system each month, and Android is no exception. Trouble is, lots of Android devices don't receive timely updates — but many are now getting regular monthly security patches to at least shore up these vulnerabilities.
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News: Lego Transforms Statues into AR Creatures at Legoland Windsor Theme Park via Mobile App
Few brands have been more enthusiastic about augmented reality than Lego, which has now expanded its AR experiences from toys to theme parks.
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How To: Watch Apple's WWDC 2021 Keynote Livestream for Sneak Peeks at iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12 & More
On June 7, Apple will reveal to developers what's in store for its upcoming operating systems, but anyone can watch the livestream to see all the new features coming this fall to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8.
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AR Snapshots: Celebrate Pride Month with These Snapchat Augmented Reality Lenses
June is Pride Month, an annual celebration of LGBTQ+ communities in commemoration of the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
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How To: This Portable Charger Can Completely Recharge Your Laptop
When you're working, in class, or just browsing the internet away from an outlet, the last thing you want is to string your devices along with a portable charger that can't recharge them as fast as you need. The Ultimate Charger: Portable Multi-Device Power Bank is exactly what it says it is — the ultimate portable charger that can power even a laptop at full speed, and it's on sale for $149.99 (it's normally $179.99).
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How To: This Trick Lets You Quickly Enable or Disable the Always-on Apple Watch Display in One Tap
When you need to subtly glance at the time or check your workout metrics without raising your wrist, the always-on display (AOD) on your Apple Watch comes in handy. However, Apple makes it seem impossible to disable it temporarily. You either choose to leave it on or off, with no clear way to shut it down for a while. It might not be obvious, but there is a shortcut that can do just that.
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How To: The Best-Selling VPN Is Now on Sale
The ability to browse the web in coffee shops, libraries, airports, and practically anywhere else you can imagine is more than convenient, but convenience has risks. Using public Wi-Fi allows others to spy on you easily. Even your own internet service provider can see every website you've ever visited. Don't fall into the trap of protecting your identity, data, and devices after it's too late.
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How To: Unlock Facial Detection & Recognition on the Inexpensive ESP32-Based Wi-Fi Spy Camera
If you've recently built a Wi-Fi spy camera out of an ESP32-CAM, you can use it for a variety of things. A baby monitor at night, a security camera for catching package thieves, a hidden video streamer to catch someone going somewhere they shouldn't be — you could use it for pretty much anything. Best of all, this inexpensive camera module can perform facial detection and facial recognition!
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How To: Scan Your Saved Passwords in Chrome to Find & Replace Compromised Login Info
If you save your passwords in Chrome or even just use Android's default password manager, Google has some new security tools you'll be interested in.
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Market Reality: Snap Spectacles Early Prototype, Volkswagen Drives into AR, Inside Lego Snapchat, & Instagram Updates AR
We're still basking in the afterglow of the HUGE Snap Partner Summit last week, where Snap made Snapchat a much stronger augmented reality platform while also unveiling the AR smartglasses version of Spectacles. This week, we got a peek at how Spectacles AR started and got our hands on Lenses from Lego and Disney featured during the keynote.
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News: Facebook Upgrades Spark AR Platform for Instagram with Segmentation & Marker Tracking Capabilities
Ever since Snapchat rebuffed its acquisition attempts, Facebook has morphed Instagram with features from Snapchat, such as stories, chat, and, of course, augmented reality.
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How To: These Wireless Headphones Are on Sale for Memorial Day
When you're listening to music, there shouldn't be anything distracting you from total immersion. That means the only cords you should be dealing with are the crystal clear chords of your favorite song. You should be able to listen to high-quality music without the distraction of static, battery failure, or poorly-fitted headphones too.
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News: Hands-On with the Lego Snapchat Augmented Reality Experience That Lets You Build With Friends Remotely
The world of Lego is timeless primarily because everyone, regardless of age or background, can build a wide variety of amazing things with the simple component blocks from the classic toymaker.
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News: Could These 26 Features Show Up in iOS 15's Upcoming Beta? We Really Hope So
When Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, and other core Apple leaders take the stage for WWDC 2021 on June 7, we'll hear a lot about exciting new things to come. We're likely to see what's in store for watchOS 8 and macOS 12, but more importantly, we'll get a glimpse at what iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 will be like.
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News: Volkswagen Offshoot Cupra Born Electric Vehicle Debuts with Impressive AR Features
The electric vehicle space is where a lot of the most cutting-edge technology is used to push vehicles forward (the best example being Tesla).
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News: Snap Team Member Reveals Early Prototype of AR Spectacles, Plus Here's Another Way to Get Your Own Pair
When Snap CEO Evan Spiegel pulled off the surprise debut of the augmented reality version of Spectacles last week, it was one of the biggest moments in the company's history.
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How To: Never Search for Apps Again with Setapp
When smartphones were first getting popular, apps were much more limited in scope. Because of that, it was easier to find better programs to do what was needed. Now, in the App Store alone, there are nearly two million apps for you to choose from. When you're just looking for an app that will work well for the task at hand, two million is a lot to sort through.
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How To: Auto-Play New Podcast Episodes on Your iPhone When Connecting Headphones, Starting a Trip, Tapping an NFC Tag & More
The Shortcuts app can help you play the next unlistened podcast from one of the shows, but getting the latest unplayed episodes from your whole queue of shows in the Podcasts app is a little trickier. There is an easy way to do it on your iPhone, though, and you can even automate it so that Podcasts plays your most recent untouched episode automatically.
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How To: Clean Unwanted Tabs & Alerts from Facebook's Nav Bar to Remove Shop, Groups, News, Watch & Notification Dots
In the Facebook app for Android and iOS, the shortcut bar has a few necessary tabs to go home and view notifications and settings. But other tabs can make the interface feel cluttered if you don't use them often enough — or at all. Thankfully, there's a quick trick to get rid of them for a cleaner navigation bar.
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How To: Work from Home in Style with This All-in-One Kit
Learning to work from home doesn't just require you to figure out how to do your work remotely. You also have to build a workstation that gets you in the professional mindset. Otherwise, you might start feeling the stress of working at home.
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How To: The Secret to Typing in All Caps on Apple Watch
There's no default keyboard on the Apple Watch, but watchOS has another way to let you type text out for emails, messages, music searches, and more on the small display, and that's Scribble. With it, you simply draw letters and other characters on the screen with your finger, then your watch converts that into plain text. However, it's not perfect, and getting the nuances of regular typing can be tough.
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News: This Is How You Can Access Disney World's Limited-Time Mickey & Minnie Mouse AR Selfie Lens on Snapchat
Last week, Snap powered through a mountain of important software and (shock!) hardware updates, as well as a few very big business partnerships.
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News: Apple Releases iOS 14.6 for iPhone, Introduces Voice Unlock After Restart, Apple Card Family, Podcast Subs & More
Apple released the latest version of its iPhone OS, iOS 14.6, today, Monday, May 24. This latest update (build number 18F72) introduces new features like unlocking your iPhone with Voice Control after a restart, Apple Card Family support for up to five people, and subscription support for shows in Podcasts.
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How To: Learn C# & Start Designing Games & Apps
Learning different coding languages can be difficult. You spend so much time mastering one and getting used to thinking along the channels you need for it that learning something new can sometimes be more difficult than starting from scratch. Starting from scratch, notably, is also difficult.
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How To: Set Up a Wi-Fi Spy Camera with an ESP32-CAM
The ESP32-CAM is a convenient little camera module with a lot of built-in power, and you can turn one into an inconspicuous spy camera to hide in any room. There's only one issue: it does omit a USB port. That makes it a little harder to program, but with an ESP32-based board, FTDI programmer, and some jumper wires, you'll have a programmed ESP32 Wi-Fi spy camera in no time.
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Market Reality: Google Goes Holographic, Snap AR Smartglasses Launch, Facebook Exec Departs, Epic Games vs. Nreal Pt. 2
Google and Snap held their annual conferences this week, and both companies managed to upstage their new AR software features with fantastic new AR hardware.
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How To: Save Your Memories Forever with This 15 TB Backup Storage
The memories on your devices are precious, even if you don't often get a chance to revisit them. The worst thing in the world is when something happens to your computer or phone, and you end up losing some of those memories because your files weren't backed up or your microSD wasn't fireproof.
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How To: Every Hidden Special Character on Your iPhone's Keyboard That You Can Unlock Right Now
Almost 190 secret characters are hiding behind your iPhone's default keyboard, and I'm not talking about what you see after tapping the "123" or "#+=" keys. These special composite characters can include accents, dots, and other diacritics, and you'll even see some strange typographical characters like the section sign, inverted marks, and per mille symbol. Here's how you find them.
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News: How to Get a Pair of Snap's New Spectacles AR Smartglasses
The tech world was taken by surprise this week with the unexpected unveiling of Snap's augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses.
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News: Apple's Second iOS 14.6 Release Candidate Available for iPhone Devs & Public Beta Testers
Apple released the second Release Candidate for iPhone on Friday, May 21. The new update, build number 18F72, comes four days after the company seeded the first 14.6 RC to developers and public testers, and two days after the first beta for iOS 14.7.
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How To: Download Spotify Songs & Podcasts on Your Apple Watch for Offline Playback
The Apple Watch is rapidly becoming a standalone device that you can use without an iPhone or internet connection, and Deezer and Spotify have just helped make that even more true by adding support for offline playback on the watch.
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News: Snap Acquires Wave Guide Maker WaveOptics for $500 Million
The big day for Snap that resulted in the debut of brand new augmented reality Spectacles smartglasses is turning into a big week.
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News: Snap Spectacles Finally Evolve into Full AR Smartglasses with Standalone Immersive Superpowers
The biggest win in the race for consumer augmented reality smartglasses to date belongs not to Apple, Facebook, or Google, but Snapchat's parent company, Snap.
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News: Snap Now Lets You Build Lego in AR Remotely with Others, Reveals AR Tie-Up with Disney, Plus AR Business Tools
The surging activity in augmented reality in both the business and consumer sectors is being matched with a wealth of updates and partnerships from Snap Inc.
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News: Snap Releases Lens Studio 4.0 with 3D Body Mesh & More, Upgrades Scan as Fashion Assistant
Throughout Thursday's virtual Snap Partner Summit, Snapchat's parent company made a profound statement: If you use Snapchat, you're a creator.
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How To: Disable the Startup Sound on Any Android Phone
Android's open source nature means it gets modified quite a bit. First, the phone manufacturer will add their customizations, then your carrier will add even more on top of that. Between the two, someone almost always adds a startup sound so that you and everyone around you will hear their jingle every time your phone reboots.
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News: Apple Releases iOS 14.7 Beta 1 for iOS Developers & Public Testers
Apple released the first beta for iOS 14.7 today, Wednesday, May 19. The update (build number 18G5023c) comes two days after Apple seeded testers the RC (release candidate) for iOS 14.6. The new update adds the ability to set timers for HomePod on your iPhone via the Home app.
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News: Google Adds Raw Depth API to Improve Spatial Awareness & Depth Data for Android AR Apps
For most mainstream users, LiDAR sensors for precision depth sensing remain the exclusive domain of Apple iPhones and iPads, but Google is helping Android device makers close the depth gap on the software side via its ARCore toolkit.
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AR Snapshots: These Snapchat AR Lenses Let You Use Your Entire Body to Create Visual Masterpieces
Snapchat's first foray into augmented reality started with the selfie camera and face-tracking technology, with the app's AR capabilities expanding from there.
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How To: Finally See What's Under the Fridge with an Endoscope Camera
A good endoscope camera can be an incredible tool for a variety of jobs. Whether you have to look under something heavy before you move it, look down a pipe before you clean it, or just give yourself extendable, bendable vision, an endoscope camera can be a fantastic tool when it works.