Google has been hiring a group of individuals on one year contracts to help the Glass explorers with their upcoming Glasswear we’ve learned. The employees would be based in New York or San Francisco but travel to events throughout the US and eventually overseas. These people will also be manning the retail presence that Google hopes to have in New York, San Francisco and possibly LA by the end of the year.
According to a report from The New York Times, citing ” a person who has tried the phone,” Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S4 will include a new “eye scrolling” feature that tracks the user’s eye to determine where to focus and when to scroll on the page:
The phone will track a user’s eyes to determine where to scroll, said a Samsung employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. For example, when users read articles and their eyes reach the bottom of the page, the software will automatically scroll down to reveal the next paragraphs of text.
As noted in the report, Samsung actually filed for a trademark in Europe for “Eye Scroll” in January and again in the United States for “Samsung Eye Scroll” in February.
Apple and other companies have filed patents for similar technology that tracks the movement of a user’s eyes to zoom, scroll, and manipulate the elements on a display without physically touching it. Read more
As noticed by TNW, Google appears to be testing a new flight search service that differs from its Google Flights offering launched in September of last year. In our tests, the service, dubbed “Flight Explorer”, is fully accessible through http://www.google.com/flights/explorer, indicating this might be an upcoming refresh of the Google Flights service. Upon navigating to the Flight Explorer page, Google automatically detects your location for the “From” category and selects what appears to be the next closest country in the “To” section.
The service also provides some improvements over Google’s old flights search, allowing users to select the trip length with a slider under their destination, as well as a number of filters along the top, including: Stops, Airline, Duration, Outbound time, and Return Time. While the service appears to be ready to go, clicking links for any flights that show up in the results takes you to a familiar Google Flights page currently. We expect to hear more about Google’s new Flight Explorer service soon.
As noted on the Google Maps blog, Google continues to update maps with new aerial, satellite, and 45-degree imagery for many cities in the U.S. and abroad. Google’s most recent addition to maps is a new collection of 45-degree imagery for 60 new cities—40 in the U.S. and 20 internationally— in places like Switzerland and Luxembourg. That brings the total number of cities with updated aerial and satellite imagery in Maps and Google Earth up to 164 cities in 108 countries. Google walked through a few of the recent updates, such as the Space Needle in Seattle and Bridges in the Sky art installation in Austria, but also provided a full list of cities with new high resolution imagery (below): Read more
Google announced on its Enterprise Blog today that it would officially make its Google Apps Vault service available to Google Apps for Government customers. Google head of eDiscovery Jack Halprin made the announcement, noting federal, state and local agencies in the United States can “now purchase Vault to help meet their compliance needs.”
Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from legal and compliance risks through advanced message archiving, retention and eDiscovery capabilities. It provides the ability to quickly search, identify, preserve and export information in response to litigation, investigation, compliance audits, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Google launched its new ARM-powered Chromebook last week with two years of 100GB Google Drive storage and 12 Gogo in-air, Wi-Fi passes for free, and it even published FAQ pages so folks could access the perks in just a few quick steps.
Here’s how to claim the 100GB of Google Drive storage:
Log into your Chromebook (ARM-powered Chromebook, Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550, or Samsung Chromebox Series 3 only).
Update to to the latest version of Chrome OS (Chrome OS 23 required).
Go to the Google Drive offer page, and the 100GB will soon load in your account (Google will verify the Chrome OS device—only one deal per Google account).
