Ben Lovejoy

Iowa planning America’s first smartphone driver’s license, working on privacy concerns

Ben Lovejoy Dec 12 2014 - 7:32 am PT

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If you’re pulled over by a patrol car in Iowa, you might in future find the officer asking for your ‘smartphone and registration, please.’ The state is working on creating a smartphone app that can be shown in place of a physical license, reports the WSJ.

DOT spokeswoman Andrea Henry said that both security and privacy concerns need to be addressed before the project can proceed. Animation might be used to guard against someone showing a screengrab in place of the app, and privacy will be protected by ensuring that “the phone never leaves your hands.”

Users could hold up the phone so that police or Transportation Security Administration officers can scan the license electronically, rather than handling the phone.

The app will also need to hide notifications while it is in use, preventing a police officer having access to any other information on the phone, such as text message alerts.

MorphoTrust USA, the company working with the state to create the app, says that it is in discussion with more than 20 other states.

• Google Translate
• translate
• Iran
• Kazakhstan
• Astana

Ten new languages added to Google Translate, bringing the total to 90

Ben Lovejoy Dec 12 2014 - 7:25 am PT

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Google has added 10 new languages to its Google Translate service, increasing the total number of languages supported to 90.

These 10 new languages will allow more than 200 million additional people to translate text to and from their native languages. These languages are available now on translate.google.com and will roll out soon to our mobile apps and to the built-in translation functionality in Chrome.  

Google says that it is “just getting started” with the new languages – which span Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Central Asia – and is inviting people to use the Improve this translation link to suggest corrections and improvements. It is also encouraging feedback through the community site it launched in July.

The languages, with quick briefings by Google, are:

• Chichewa (Chinyanja) is spoken by 12 million people in Malawi and surrounding countries. It is one of 55 languages used in the greetings that now travel the galaxy on the Voyager interstellar probes.
• Malagasy is spoken by 18 million people in Madagascar, where it is the national language. It is one of only a few languages which puts the verb first in sentences, followed by the object and then the subject.
• Sesotho has 6 million native speakers. It is the national language of Lesotho and one of 11 official languages in South Africa.

• Malayalam (മലയാളം), with 38 million native speakers, is a major language in India and one of that country’s 6 classical languages. It’s been one of the most-requested languages, so we are especially excited to add Malayalam support!
• Myanmar (Burmese, မြန်မာစာ) is the official language of Myanmar with 33 million native speakers. Myanmar language has been in the works for a long time as it’s a challenging language for automatic translation, both from language structure and font encoding perspectives. While our system understands different Myanmar inputs, we encourage the use of open standards and therefore only output Myanmar translations in Unicode.
• Sinhala (සිංහල) is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and natively spoken by 16 million people. In September the local community in Sri Lanka organized Sinhala Translate Week, and since then, participants have contributed tens of thousands of translations to our system. We’re happy to be able to release Sinhala as one of the new languages today!
• Sundanese (Basa Sunda) is spoken on the island of Java in Indonesia by 39 million people. While Sundanese does have its own script, it is today commonly written using the Latin alphabet, which is what our system uses.

• Kazakh (Қазақ тілі) with 11 million native speakers in Kazakhstan. We’ve received strong support from Kazakh language enthusiasts, and we hope to continue collaborating with the local communities in the region to add even more languages in the future, including Kyrgyz.
• Tajik (Тоҷикӣ), a close relative to modern Persian, is spoken by more than 4 million people in Tajikistan and beyond.
• Uzbek (Oʻzbek tili) is spoken by 25 million people in Uzbekistan. In addition to receiving Uzbek community support, we’ve incorporated the Uzbek dictionary by Shavkat Butaev into our system.

Xiaomi confirms compliance with court order, halting all smartphone sales in India

Ben Lovejoy Dec 12 2014 - 4:19 am PT

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Xiaomi has confirmed in a Facebook post by Global VP Hugo Barra that it is complying with a court order to suspend sales of all smartphones in India pending resolution of a patent infringement claim by Ericsson.

We have been forced to suspend sales in India until further notice due to an order passed by the Delhi High Court. As a law abiding company, we are investigating the matter carefully and assessing our legal options.

Our sincere apologies to all Indian Mi fans! Please rest assured that we’re doing all we can to revert the situation. We have greatly enjoyed our journey with you in India over the last 5 months and we firmly intend to continue it!

Xiaomi had earlier stated that it was “open to working with Ericsson to resolve this matter amicably.”

• Google
• Material Design
• Google Account

Google account settings page gets Material Design makeover, new URL

Ben Lovejoy Dec 11 2014 - 7:17 am PT

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Google has updated its account settings page with a material design makeover, and a shiny new myaccount.google.com URL. In a brief blog post, Google said:

Tabs have been removed in favor of a simple, single landing page that links directly to existing account resources. All other functionality is unchanged. 

The YouTube for Android app also got a material design update a few days ago.

• Apps and Updates
• Spotify
• Promo
• Spotify Premium

Spotify offers three months of Premium for just $0.99 – but you probably won’t qualify

Ben Lovejoy Dec 4 2014 - 6:15 am PT

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Spotify Premium gives you no ads, offline listening, on-demand listening even on mobile and better sound quality, and normally costs $9.99. So to get three months for just $0.99 sounds like a deal that’s too good to be true.

Unfortunately, it pretty much is. While the deal is there for new users, anyone who has ever subscribed to Premium or Unlimited isn’t eligible, and nor is anyone who has ever taken a one-month free trial of Premium. So, er, just about anyone who likes Spotify, then.

Still, if you do have friends who’ve never taken up the trial, this would be the perfect time for them to try it out. They will have to provide card details and remember to cancel before the three months is up, otherwise they will start paying the usual $9.99 a month.

For any budding DJs, the music mixing app djay came to Android a month or so ago, complete with Spotify integration.

Spotify also recently announced a family deal of $4.99 a month for each additional Premium user. The Spotify Music Android app is a free download from Google play.

Via 9to5Toys

• Google
• Google Apps
• GOOG
• Microsoft
• Google Apps for Work

Google stepping up push of Apps for Work by increasing reseller commissions

Ben Lovejoy Dec 4 2014 - 5:33 am PT

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Google is planning to offer higher commissions to resellers who sign up enterprise customers for its Google Apps for Work packages, reports the WSJ.

Google plans to boost the commissions it pays some outside firms to sell its workplace software, signaling a more serious challenge to Microsoft’s dominance at larger companies, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google currently pays a 20% commission, typically earning resellers $10 per user per year, but is planning to offer a bigger cut to its most successful resellers in order to encourage companies to further boost sales. The exact details of the new commission structure are not yet known.

The company recently announced that Sprint had become a reseller for mobile-focused business apps. High-profile companies that have adopted the Apps for Work suite include auditors PwC, Squarespace and WordPress.

While Microsoft remains the dominant player in office productivity software, the two companies have been on a converging path for some time, Google expanding its apps suite while Microsoft focuses more on the cloud.

• Android
• Apps and Updates
• Google Play
• Pandora
• Streaming radio

New Pandora Android app rolling out with emphasis on personalization

Ben Lovejoy Dec 2 2014 - 6:41 am PT

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Pandora is rolling out an updated version of its Android smartphone app with a strong emphasis on personalization.

Personalized genre and artist suggestions will now appear at the top of your list of stations, and a new thumbs-up icon on the now-playing screen gives you fast access to song ratings – as well as acting as a visual reminder that you only get the most from the service if you get into the habit of rating songs.

There’s also a modest visual redesign. The update will roll out to phones in the coming weeks (it’s not yet available from Google play), with a tablet refresh to follow at a later date.

Pandora made it to Google Glass back in August, allowing voice control of stations and touchpad control of play/pause, favoriting and dismissing a track.