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This past week’s release of the iPhone X brought with it the typical Apple ad tsunami, touting that, among other talents, “Augmented Reality. Is a reality.”

True enough. This is probably the first time we’ve seen a snarling Tyrannosaurus Rex stalking around a basketball court, as it does in the iPhone X ad. Rex was probably just mad they wouldn’t pass the ball to his tiny little baby hands for the open three. Apple can indeed take some credit for supercharging augmented reality right now, and not just with the powerful, highly capable iPhone X (never mind the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, the X’s also capable if less powerful brethren, released to an indifferent market a month ago).

Back in June, Apple gave developers ARKit, its set of tools to make Ar app creation easier. This fall, Google followed suit, announcing its version, Ar Core. And Facebook is offering Ar Studios.

Exclusive: Molly Shannon, who just received an Emmy nomination for her recurring role on HBO’s Enlightened, has been tapped for an arc on another HBO half-hour series, the upcoming Getting On. Additionally, the Saturday Night Live alumna is set for a recurring role on the Fox family comedy Raising Hope. On Getting On, a U.S. version of the award-winning BBC Four medical comedy, Shannon will play Phyllis Sullivan, a sweet, slightly discombobulated soul — at the end of her rope — who is giving too much of herself up in caring for children, spouse, pets, and now, her ailing mother. On the upcoming fourth season of Raising Hope, Shannon will play Maxime, the new owner of Howdy’s. She’ll first appear in episode 4. Shannon, repped by UTA and Steven Levy, is currently starring opposite John C Reilly in the indie Life After Beth. Related: Emmys: Reactions To Academy’s...

The unctuous Fox-produced movie about Google is a giant free advertisement for its corporate mentor, and a disturbing trend

Fancy shelling out your hard-earned cash to watch a two-hour corporate video? If so, you've a treat in store. The Internship isn't billed as a commercial: it's supposed to be a wacky comedy in which the one-time Wedding Crashers gatecrash a tech giant's intern scheme. However, the film isn't set in a fictional workplace, as you might expect: the firm involved is explicitly Google, and the search monster pretty much steals the show from Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

Much of the action takes place and some of it was shot at the hallowed Googleplex in Santa Clara. To accommodate other sequences, Google's creative team assisted with the design of a set and verified its accessories down to the most minute detail. Over two years, they lent props, advised on internal slang,...

Glee‘s Jayma Mays is set to co-star opposite Will Arnett, Margo Martindale and Beau Bridges in CBS‘ new comedy series The Millers. The multi-camera show from Greg Garcia centers on Nathan Miller (Arnett), a local roving news reporter. After finally breaks the news of his recent divorce to his parents, Carol (Martindale) and Tom (Bridges), his father is inspired to follow suit and leaves his wife of 43 years. Carol moves in with Will, while Tom moves in with Will’s sister Debbie (Mays) and her husband. Mays replaces Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who played Debbie in the pilot. The role of her husband, played in the pilot by Michael Rapaport, also is being recast. In addition to her regular role on The Millers next season, Mays is expected to do a handful of episodes of Fox’s Glee where she started off as a regular before segueing to recurring last season.

Here we are, kids! Yet another reason why we're green with envy of our brothers and sisters across the pond. On tap right now is your first word about an upcoming project called Afraid of the Dark and it sounds absolutely delicious!

From the Press Release

Afraid of the Dark is a new brand of theatrical terror that paralyzes the audience with fear. Everyone is afraid of something. What scares you when the lights go out? Afraid of the Dark will have its World Premiere in London this autumn, playing at The Charing Cross Theatre from 2 September – 26 October, with a press night on Wednesday 11 September.

50’s Hollywood, A failing B-movie producer and his team struggle to find the next terrifying blockbuster. A mysterious stranger appears – blurring the line between nightmare and reality while worming his way into their minds, exploiting their very worst fears……

Where does your nightmare begin?

Afraid...

Okay, so, sometimes in life, I can be a score-keeper -- someone who keeps track of what he gives and what he gets in return. An annoying quality, to say the least, and I'm sure my wife has your sympathy, but it's made me highly attuned to when and where credit is due.

Recently, I've been given two different credits on Royal Pains. I'd like to clarify just how much genuine credit is due me!

Producer: Mark Feuerstein

Uh, yeah, not sooo much. If my producer hat were shot off my head by a bunch of resentful line-producers tomorrow, the show would get produced perfectly without a scratch. I have definitely had a hand in helping to cast a bunch of roles on our show, and I certainly keep things positive and upbeat on set, but it's not like I'm on the phone all-day, like our Upm, Kathy Ciric who...

David Costabile has landed a big new recurring role on the upcoming season of USA Network’s breakout series Suits. He will play Jessica (Gina Torres) and Harvey’s (Gabriel Macht) former managing partner Daniel Hardman, a brilliant lawyer who, following the death of his wife, returns to the firm, which had been run by Jessica in his absence. In another major boss addition to a USA series, Rebecca Creskoff (Hung) has joined the upcoming season of CIA drama Covert Affairs, playing Annie’s (Piper Peribo) new boss/mentor. She is with Innovative and Steven Levy. Mahershala Ali has been added to the cast of David Fincher’s Netflix drama series House Of Cards. The political thriller stars Kevin Spacey as Rep. Frank Underwood, the Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives who after being passed over for Secretary of State hatches a plot to bring down the new president.

"What kind of laptop would you choose to save the world?" asked an Apple ad that appeared all but alongside the release of Independence Day in 1996. That was the blockbuster, you'll remember, in which Jeff Goldblum uses a prototype PowerBook to upload a virus into an alien mothership, bringing down the entire invading fleet.

Steve Jobs was only 56. While he never set out to save the world exactly, he damn well did mean to change it and, as Steven Levy argues in Wired, he did just that several times over. "He combined an innate understanding of technology with an almost supernatural sense of what customers would respond to. His conviction that design should be central to his products not only produced successes in the marketplace but elevated design in general, not just in consumer electronics but everything that aspires to the high end…. People who can claim credit for game-changing...

Congratulations. You've just been tapped to revamp everything Google does. How do you get your team to remember why they're doing what they're doing? Try painting a mural.

Google+, launched on Tuesday, is no small venture. It’s a massive effort at the Googleplex to remake the entire company--and every one of its offerings--into something more social.

So how does a company that has committed a slew of current Google products and dozens of teams to the mission stay focused? One way is by painting a giant mural--of the picture above--on the walls near the command center for said mission.

The Google project to get social, dubbed "Emerald Sea," started a little more than a year ago when Urs Holzle, a senior Google executive who was one of its first hires and its first VP of engineering, penned a memo (later to become known as the "Urs-quake") declaring that the...

In Steven Levy's new book 'Inside The Plex', we get a rare first-hand view of Google's flirtation, and eventual disillusionment, with politics as a means to foster social change.

To begin with--Levy explores the social and political roots of the two founders Sergi Brin and Larry Page. Both of them come from an intellectual upbringing and were raised with sense of obligation to create an impact on society. And while technologists often think of politics as the antithesis of reasoned, logic based, objective reasoning--reading The Plex you can see how the Googlers, at least for a time, thought that an Obama Presidency might be in sync with their own view of how knowledge and a connected world could replace local or regional fiefdoms with a data driven, solution oriented world.

As just one example of the warm relationship between the Presidential Candidate and the Googlers--Levy tells of a...

Molly Shannon has been tapped to star on NBC's comedy pilot The Mastersons of Manhattan, while Ving Rhames is set for ABC's one-hour pilot Football Wives.

Additionally, Jayma Mays has landed the lead on ABC's comedy pilot Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office, Samaire Armstrong and Zoe McLellan have joined ABC's drama pilot Dirty Sexy Money, Chi McBride is set to co-star in ABC's drama pilot Pushing Daisies, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe has landed a lead in ABC's comedy pilot The Call, Nestor Carbonell has been cast in CBS' untitled Cynthia Cidre drama pilot, Yara Martinez has come aboard Fox's drama pilot The Apostles and Jennifer Esposito has been cast in ABC's comedy pilot Sam I Am

Mastersons, from NBC Universal TV Studio, is a serialized soap revolving around two socialite sisters (Shannon, Natasha Richardson). Shannon will play the younger sister who is on trial for murder.

Shannon next will be seen in the feature Grey Matters. She also stars in Mike White's Year of the Dog, which premiered at last month's Sundance Film Festival and is slated to open in April.

She is repped by ICM and manager Steven Levy.

Wives, from ABC TV Studio, focuses on the wives of professional football players. In the pilot, directed by Bryan Singer, Rhames will play the GM of a football team.