Articles by Quinten Plummer

Microsoft on Monday unveiled its version of a teleporter, called "holoportation," which was designed to transmit 3D models of people anywhere in the world Holoportation -- which leverages camera arrays for scanning -- compresses, transmits and reconstructs the 3D scans to Microsoft's HoloLens and other head-mounted displays....

Amazon has carved another notch in its belt, adding one more customer to what it has called a "tiny fraction of cases" of people guilty of making too many returns The company banned Greg Nelson, a computer programmer, from shopping at the site because he returned 37 of 343 items purchased, The Guardian reported last week....

Apple on Monday announced a pair of new products in old sizes -- the 4-inch iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro -- banking on user preferences for the familiar form factors to lessen their hesitancy to upgrade Although Apple's hour-long "Loop You In" event was short on surprises, it was slimmer on filler as well. Among the notable extras, Apple an...

Sony last week announced it would begin taking preorders for a cost-shaving virtual reality bundle Priced at US$499, the PlayStation VR bundle includes everything needed except the PlayStation 4 console. It contains a VR headset, cables, stereo headphones, a PlayStation camera, two PlayStation Move motion controllers and a pair of discs etched with...

Instagram on Tuesday announced plans to dump chronological posts in favor of algorithmic recommendations Users miss about 70 percent of the content that flows through their feeds, which the company attributed to its growth and its system for ordering content....

Microsoft this week announced that it would support cross-network play between its latest gaming console and other platforms Cross-network support would allow Xbox One players to engage in multiplayer gaming with friends and randoms on platforms such as Steam and the PlayStation Network....

Microsoft on Monday unveiled AIX, a platform that its researchers have been using to turn Minecraft into an artificial intelligence learning environment. Although Microsoft's 2014 decision to buy Minecraft raised some eyebrows -- the main criticism being that the game had run its course by then -- the company has been putting it to some innovative...

The USA Today Network last week announced VRtually There, a virtual reality news program that will evolve alongside the nascent VR sector Set to launch this spring, VRtually There will take a network approach and will air an assortment of regularly scheduled programming, according to theGannett-owned company....

Oculus VR this week launched Oculus Social for Samsung's Gear VR viewer Gear VR users can create profiles on Oculus Social and search out friends via real names or handles....

Intel on Wednesday announced its intent to acquire Replay Technologies, the company known for elevating the NBA All-Star Weekend with cutting-edge 3D graphics Replay develops and maintains what it calls "freeD" -- that is, free dimensional -- technology. Sports fans may have noticed the Matrix-esque effect employed at other sporting events....

Toyota on Monday introduced a concept for a piece of wearable tech that could help the visually impaired better navigate the world around them Dubbed "Project Blaid," the mobility device would sit atop a wearer's shoulders and use cameras to sense the layout of indoor spaces....

With its reputation preceding it, Peeple on Monday launched on the iTunes App Store The goal of the app is to help people better understand each other, according to the company....

Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney last week called on Microsoft to remove the walls it's building around the Windows Store with its Universal Windows Platform initiative The problem is that it is impossible to install and update UWP apps from third-party publishers outside of the Windows Store, he wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian....

Hello Games on Thursday began taking preorders for No Man's Sky, its procedurally generated journey to the center of the universe. ...

Meta on Wednesday began taking preorders for its Meta 2 augmented reality headset, and announced it would begin shipping the US$949 product in the third quarter of this year Meta has been working on an experience that blends "the art of user interface design with the science of the brain," CEO Meron Gribetz said during a session at last month's TE...

One of Google's self-driving cars kissed a bus on Valentine's day, marking the first accident in which the one of the company's autonomous vehicles was at least partly at fault Possibly too smart for its own good, the self-driving car was attempting to reenter its previous lane when it contacted a municipal bus....

Facebook on Thursday yanked the drapery off its Canvas, inviting marketers to splash it with their best promotions. The new platform will provide brands with a new medium for storytelling, and it will return ad pages up to 10 times faster than mobile Web pages do, the company proclaimed....

Three years of thought went into the think-between-steps shooter gameSuperhot, which was released Thursday Born of a week-long first-person-shooter game jam, Superhot's concept caught the attention of the Kickstarter crowd, raising US$250,000....

Google-owned Boston Dynamics on Tuesday gave the world a look at the latest version of Atlas, a bipedal robot that someday could threaten manual laborers' livelihoods Boston Dynamics certainly didn't say or imply that the fast-progressing Atlas robot would force humans out of their jobs. The clandestine group merely demonstrated the latest build of...

Facebook has been using artificial intelligence to sharpen its focus on the roughly 10 percent of the world that has been overlooked by the Internet revolution, the company announced Sunday at the Mobile World Congress The work has been led by the Connectivity Lab, Facebook's research and development wing, which is tasked with making the breakthrou...