Facebook announced their long-awaited foray into the smart glasses space Thursday morning, launching the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses in partnership with eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. The svelte frames are some of the most low-profile yet available to consumers and will allow users to snap photos and videos with the two onboard 5 MP cameras, listen to...
Tag: #augmentedreality
Meet retail’s new sustainability strategy: Personalization
Sindhya Valloppillil Contributor Share on Twitter Sindhya Valloppillil is the founder and CEO of Skin Dossier, a venture partner at Next Gen Ventures, a freelance writer and formerly a beauty industry executive and marketing professor. More posts by this contributor It may not be as glamorous as D2C, but beauty tech is big money We...
Korean 3D spatial data tool startup Urbanbase closes $11.1M Series B+ round
Urbanbase, a Seoul-based company that develops a 3D spatial data platform for interior planning and design, announced today it has raised $11.1 million (13 billion won) in a Series B+ round as it scales up. This round of funding was led by Hanwha Hotel & Resort, which is a subsidiary of South Korean conglomerate Hanwha...
After community backlash, Pokémon GO reinstates a COVID safety and accessibility feature
Pokémon GO announced yesterday that it will permanently keep an in-game feature that made the game easier to play while social distancing. Introduced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the feature doubled the interaction radius around key augmented reality landmarks that are essential to gameplay. Though Niantic — parent company to Pokémon GO —...
TikTok is building its own AR development platform, TikTok Effect Studio
Both Facebook and Snap offer tools that allow developers to build out augmented reality (AR) experiences and features for their own respective family of apps. Now, TikTok is looking to do the same. The company recently launched a new creative toolset called TikTok Effect Studio, currently in private beta testing, which will allow its own...
Pokémon GO influencers threaten a boycott after Niantic removes COVID safety measures
The creators of Pokémon GO, Niantic developed one of the first mainstream augmented reality games, boasting 166 million users and over a billion dollars in revenue last year. Taking inspiration from the main series Pokémon games, Pokémon GO uses in-game incentives to encourage users to explore their surroundings, team up with other users to fight...
Zuckerberg is turning trillion-dollar Facebook into a ‘metaverse’ company, he tells investors
Following the quarterly release of Facebook’s earnings numbers where the company’s CFO takes time to walk analysts through the nitty gritty of the company’s financials, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a moment to zoom out and wax on the company’s future goals, specifically calling out his ambitions to turn Facebook into “a metaverse company.” “I wanted...
New York Times Revives Its AR Storytelling on Instagram with Tokyo Olympics Experiences
Old school media stalwart The New York Times mobile-ar.reality.news/news/new-york-times-adds-ar-its-coverage-time-for-winter-olympics-0182577/ launched its augmented reality news content in 2018 with a feature on the athletes of the Winter Olympics. However, after a solid year of AR reporting, the Times all but abandoned its AR news coverage via its mobile app, instead opting to publish AR content via...
Google Adds More Olympic Athletes to Its Roster of Augmented Reality Search Content
After facing delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Olympic Games are underway in Tokyo, but a surge in cases worldwide has taken the spectator out of these spectator sports. However, thanks to AR content in Google Search, fans can get closer to select athletes than they would have if they had a ticket to...
USA Today Showcases New Summer Olympics Sports with Augmented Reality
After a postponement of the Summer Olympics for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tokyo is set to host the games this summer, despite a surge in cases in the city. Nonetheless, the games seem set to go on, and USA Today has published two AR experiences highlighting two new sports, skateboarding and sports...