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Education, Google, News, VR World

Google bringing 1 million VR expeditions to Middle Eastern students

It looks like nothing is immune to the spread of virtual reality. Education certainly isn’t, and as part of Google’s push for VR in education, the company is bringing its “VR Expeditions” to students in the Middle East. VR Expeditions allow virtual tours of locations all around the world, which provides a more interactive learning experience for students. To make this possible, Google is partnering with Munfarid, a VR/AR-centric Middle Eastern company. The partnership between the two has produced the VRXOne kit, which includes headsets for students and a tablet for instructors to control the experience. With the help of Google Expeditions, Munfarid plans to

Android, Augmented Reality (AR), Google, News

Google dances away from Tango

Google has announced that they are moving on from Tango, their augmented reality platform, in favour of their newer ARCore platform. The announcement came via Twitter last Friday. “We’re turning down support for Tango on March 1, 2018,” the Tango team said in a Tweet. “Thank you to our incredible community of developers who made such progress with Tango over the last three years. We look forward to continuing the journey with you on ARCore,” they concluded. Tango’s fate appears to be largely a result of software becoming more capable. While Tango required cameras and IR sensors to locate and orient itself to objects in

aerospace, Artificial Intelligence, Companies, Google, Space and Science

Artificial Intelligence Helps NASA Discover New Planets

The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009, and, since then has produced more than 30,000 signals measuring light from stars to search for possible planets in distant parts of the galaxy. With a little help of telescopic data, astronomers have found more than 3,500 planets, up from 329 known before the Kepler mission. Now artificial intelligence is helping to find even more. Last week, researchers from Google and University of Texas at Austin Christopher Shallue and Andrew Vanderburg, announced that a machine-learning algorithm had discovered two new planets, Kepler 80g and Kepler 90i. Shallue, a senior software engineer with Google’s research team Google AI, came

Entertainment, Google, News, Videos, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

YouTube VR comes to Steam Early Access, issues ensue

YouTube is the biggest video distribution platform in the world, but it’s still prone to issues. Every major update to the site results in some backlash or another, and this often extends to YouTube implementations on other platforms as well. Today, that platform is SteamVR. So what happened? The YouTube VR application on Google Daydream lets users browse YouTube in a 3D space with full 360-degree visuals, allowing 360 videos to be watched in VR. This same application was ported from Daydream to SteamVR, and unfortunately, the Steam counterpart doesn’t seem to function quite as smoothly. For some users, the YouTube VR app outright doesn’t

Apple, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Companies, Facebook, Fintech, Google, Intel, Microsoft, News, Nvidia, Virtual Reality (VR)

Investors Guide: Investing in AI and AR Stocks is the New Gold

The year is coming to an end and if you were thinking about investing in tech companies – now may be the right time. The bullish market still lasts (eighth years in a row now), and this year was pretty good for investors despite the threats of a nuclear or potential trade war and/or crypto currencies rising . Through the end of November, the S&P 500 Index gained 21%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 25%, and the Nasdaq Composite surged 27%. Big technology companies in the Nasdaq 100 Index, tracked by the popular QQQ ETF, have jumped 32% since January. Take AR for

Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Companies, Google, Hardware, Microsoft, Military, News, VR World, Wearables

Apple Manufacturer Quanta Partners With Lumus For AR Displays

Quanta Computer Inc. is a manufacturing partner for Apple and many other hardware manufacturers in the PC/smartphone space. They’re one of the most important companies that consumers have never heard of. Recently, they reached out to Lumus, an Israel-based business that designs displays for AR glasses and headsets. If you recall Google’s “Glass” project from a few years back (which included very limited shipments of Google Glasses), Lumus works on similar hardware and has been doing so for quite a while. In 2008, they sold the PD-18, one of the first AR glasses of its kind, and just a few years later they started producing hardware

Artificial Intelligence, Business, Companies, Google, News

Google Built AI That Can Build Its Own AI

Back in May of this year Google announced the creation of an AI (AutoML) that is able to design better AIs. AutoML built a new AI that’s called NASNet that is used to recognize objects. NASNet outperformed its human designed counterparts and the methods used to develop it seems to be the future of advanced AI. The Google researchers automated the design of machine learning models using an approach called reinforcement learning. For NASNet, the task was recognizing objects — people, cars, traffic lights, handbags, backpacks, etc. — in a video in real-time. The Google Brain researchers, Barret Zoph, Vijay Vasudevan, Jonathon Shlens, and Quoc Le, claim that their machine-designed model beats all state-of-the-art

Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Companies, Google, News

Google: Hundreds of Millions of Android Devices Will Use AR

Google expects that “hundreds of millions” of Android devices will be capable of augmented reality (AR) uses next year, bringing a slew of potential monetization opportunities. Amit Singh, vice president of business and operations for virtual reality (VR) at Google, spoke about the company’s investment in the technology and the release of ARCore, a platform that allows developers to make AR apps for Android. During a talk at the Web Summit tech conference in Portugal (Lisbon) Tuesday he announced that there will be hundreds of millions of phones that will be AR ready. “And the current stage is … we are helping developers … build the

Companies, Education, Entertainment, Google, News, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

Discovery and Google collaborate on immersive VR experiences

This past Friday, Discovery Communications and Google launched the first chapter of Discovery TRVLR, a collaboration that they herald as a “groundbreaking new immersive series,” which aims to provide a 360-degree cross-cultural experience. This new content is viewable by using the Discovery VR app. The app supports a range of mobile and VR platforms, including the new Google Daydream View headset and Google Cardboard. To date, the app has been downloaded over four million times. Each new chapter of Discovery TRVLR will explore a different continent, and immerse viewers in the rituals, traditions, quests, and environments of those regions. A total of 38 episodes will

3D, Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Companies, Google, Graphics, Virtual Reality (VR)

Google Created Poly – Both AR and VR Platform

Google is opening a new platform called Poly where people can find and distribute virtual and augmented reality objects. Built for development kits like Google’s own ARCore, or Apple’s ARKit, Poly allows anyone to upload or view 3D objects in a mobile or desktop browser. Google has been offering a number of tools to make it easier to create those 3D assets for several months now, including the development of the free Tilt Brush and Blocks solutions and their associated websites. Now, Google Poly, makes it easy for creative types both share and access a warehouse of 3D objects and scenes. The 3D objects that are uploaded to Poly are published

Artificial Intelligence, Business, Companies, Entertainment, Google, News

Google AlphaGo Zero AI started to learn by itself

Google’s DeepMind says it has made another big advance in artificial intelligence by getting a machine to master the Chinese game of Go without help from human players. Named AlphaGo Zero, the AI program has been hailed as a major advance because it mastered the ancient Chinese board game from scratch, and with no human help beyond being told the rules. In games against the 2015 version, which famously beat Lee Sedol, the South Korean grandmaster, AlphaGo Zero won 100 to 0. The newest version of its Go-playing algorithm was not only better than the original AlphaGo, but it had taught itself how to play the

Artificial Intelligence, Business, Companies, Google, News, VR World

Google Gadgets Going High on AI

Instead of making phones with nicer screens, faster chips or polished industrial design, it seems that Google is trying to leverage heavily on Artificial Intelligence. According to Straits Times, Google Assistant, its virtual assistant software powered by artificial intelligence (AI), is on virtually all of Google’s new hardware devices, ever listening and ready to help users with their queries and tasks. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive already had said on a conference two weeks ago that as an “AI first” company, this is a “unique moment in time” for Google to combine hardware, software and artificial intelligence. “It’s radically rethinking how computing should work,” he

Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence, Business, Companies, Entertainment, Google, Hardware, Microsoft, News, Smart Home, VR World

Amazon willing to team up with Apple and Google

Amazon.com Inc. is willing to team up with competitors Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google if it would help improve customers’ experience with its Alexa voice-activated virtual assistant, an executive working on the platform said. The online retailer, which is already working with Microsoft Corp. on productivity features for Alexa such as calendar interactions, will put the user first in pursuit of any other partnerships, said Toni Reid, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Echo devices, who has been on the team since 2014. Just a few weeks ago, Apple was hiring brand new software engineers in Cambridge to help improve its Siri service. Sensing

Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality (AR), Back to School, Education, Google, News, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

Thanks to VR, Teachers Could (Finally) become Millionares

Robot classroom assistants and virtual reality learning could see “celebrity teachers” make millions, experts claim. Technology is set to play a vital role in helping the 263 million children globally who are not in school, delegates at the annual Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) heard. Mark Steed, the director of Dubai private school Jess, said the format was already being used by some teachers to offer global internet-based seminars, earning millions of pounds in the process. He pointed to a Korean teacher who offers online lessons on “cramming” learning and made $8m (£6m) in one year. Teachers in the Middle East , Egypt and UAE

Breaking, Education, Google, HTC, News, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World

VR Fighting Racism: Try Walking in My Shoes Experience

An assistant professor of social work at Columbia University, professor Courtney D. Cogburn and her team are hard at work at completing a project named “1000 Cut Journey”. Developed in collaboration with Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which is led by prof. Jeremy Bailenson. According to Engadget, this is the first time the experience is showcasing at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. With the use of an HTC Vive Virtual Reality headset, users are put in the body of a black man, Michael Sterling, at four different stages of his life. Titled in reference to the gruesome torture method of death by a thousand

Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Companies, Facebook, Google, News, startups, VR World

Let’s go to the Theatre – AR Version

Google Glass managed to make AR and it seemed inaccessible with limited applications and maximum privacy concerns. Now, simple AR apps like Pokemon Go and Snapchat have brought down consumer walls and made us see the fun side of the technology. Now that ARKit has launched on iOS 11 and Apple has effectively created a huge platform for AR on the iPhone overnight we can only see it expanding in terms of depth and breadth. Just to remember, ARKit is an augmented reality framework Apple introduced at WWDC ’17 that is compatible with iOS 11 iPhones and iPads. ARKit lets developers place digital objects in the real world by blending the

Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Companies, Google, HTC, Microsoft, News, VR World

Digital marketing will grow to more than $162 billion

According to an International Data Corporation report, the digital reality market will grow from $5.2 billion last year to more than $162 billion in 2020. Corporate CEOs in any field would be hard-pressed to find a multibillion-dollar industry with an anticipated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 181.3% over the 2015–2020 forecast period in any sector other than digital reality. Also, established by HTC earlier this year, the Virtual Reality Venture Capital Alliance, or VRVCA, is an organisation comprising of VR-invested firms and companies who believe VR is the next big medium. With HTC at the forefront, the VRVCA has set aside US$12 billion to grow VR, with investments

Analysis, Augmented Reality (AR), Business, Entertainment, Facebook, Google, HTC, News, Samsung, Sony, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World, Wearables

IDC: AR/VR Market Rising more than 100%

Worldwide revenues for the augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) market are forecast to increase by 100% or more over each of the next four years, according to the latest update to the Worldwide Semiannual Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Their forecast calls for the combined AR and VR headset market to reach 13.7 million units by the end of the year, and 81.2 million by 2021 with a compound growth rate of 56.1 percent. The majority of the market will belong to VR, which will account for nine out of 10 headsets until 2019, but AR will pick up

Business, Entertainment, Google, News, Smartphones, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World, Wearables, Wearables

Google Enables to Browse the Web in VR with Chrome

Virtual reality is something every gamer is talking about. Sure it’s great to win wars, fly in a space or kill a handful of zombies but, what about everyday usage for not-so-gaming population? Google (who else) is working rapidly on transforming the way we experience the everyday stuff – like watching movies or browsing the web. At Google’s I/O developer conference in May, the company announced that it was working on a VR version of Chrome (Chrome 61) that could work in Daydream. Last week, Chrome development team member and “happiness evangelist” François Beaufort announced that the first set of features are now ready for

Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Business, Event, Google, Hardware, iOS, Mobile, News, Smartphones

Apple iPhone 8, 8 Plus and iPhone X will Boost AR Market

At the very first event in Steve Jobs Theater at its new headquarters, Apple Inc. announced a series of devices, including the new smartwatch “Watch Series 3”, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus (realistically, these are iPhone 7S and 7S Plus) refreshments, and the king of the event – a $1000 iPhone X (pronounced ten), with X marking 10th anniversary since iPhone 2G came to market. All three phones are powered by a powerful A11 Bionic SoC processor, bringing a set of next-generation features to all three phones, with Augmented Reality and FaceID perhaps being the most impressive ones. Augmented Reality, in that way, superimposes digital