Stephen Hall

Another “alpha” release of the Project Ara MDK (module developers kit) has been released, and interestingly, it goes into some previously undiscussed preliminary details regarding requirements for developers to submit their modules to the Google-run module marketplace we told you about last month. Also, it was announced today on Phonebloks’ blog that a company called Vestigen, known for creating smart liquid sensors, will be creating a module for the project.

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According to a report this morning from Reuters, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun sat down with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to talk about a potential investment in October, but nothing came of the talks. Facebook being banned in China—the home and birthplace of Xiaomi—was one of the main discussion points, with both CEOs considering what the implications would be of the international investment. While Xiaomi was definitely worried of the “political fallout” that could come of the deal, China’s largest smartphone maker also considered its important relationship with Google–as the company’s phones all run Android—as a reason to distance itself from Facebook.

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Falcon Pro was one of the most notorious Android Twitter clients for quite some time, but development of the app got pushed aside when it started running into its Twitter API token limits. But the app’s developer Joaquim Verges has now brought it back with the release of version 3, which has been completely rewritten and re-imagined, and packs a gorgeous new dark-skinned Material Design aesthetic. 
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Healthcare seems to be one area in which Google Glass is just irresistibly great. Doctors, after all, aren’t unfamiliar with wearable tech to help them with their job; they already wear stethoscopes on a daily basis. Adding Glass to the mix brings new possibilities for more efficient patient care as well as a better work day for doctors, and Augmedix—one of the first Glass at Work partners—knows more about using Glass in medicine than any other company. Today, Augmedix announced that they’ve scored another $16 million in Series A funding.

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Dr. Joseph “Joe” Cohen has been a pediatrician for 15 years, and he saw a need in the medical workplace. Current EMR (electronic medical record) solutions are ridiculously expensive, antiquated, offer little support for pediatrics, and require hours of rigorous training before doctors can use them to efficiently document and organize patient information. Seeing this, Dr. Joe (as his young patients call him) developed a pediatric solution of his own, and deployed an early version in his own practice, Cedar Park Pediatrics, with the added bonus of bringing down the average cost of processing patients from $58 to around $20 per visit.

And while the system is of course platform-agnostic for the most part, Google technologies like Chrome and Glass are a key players in the kiddoEMR product despite downfalls that Dr. Joe says make the current generation of the latter completely impractical for the workplace. The system of course will mostly be interacted with via an in-browser interface on a desktop computer, but Glass provides some robust functionality that would make it a no-brainer for pediatricians. Doctors like Joe, though, need to be able to use their hands, and the old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is especially true when diagnosing patients.

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Fifteen Google partners are handing out Android pins at CES 2015, meaning that the Mountain View corporation itself is not completely absent from the world’s largest trade show after all.

According to representatives from the partner companies in question, Google sent out several employees to CES booths yesterday to hand out plastic Android mascot stands and hundreds of pins. All of the companies Google has partnered with are showing off Android on their devices in some way here at CES, including Sony, Samsung, Pioneer, Chevrolet, Dell, Hyundai, JVC Kenwood, Razer, Nvidia, Panasonic, Parrot, Intel, LG, Qualcomm, and Sharp.

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It appears 2015 is going to be the first year that Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay finally start seeing more widespread attention, and Pioneer is kicking the year off with five new NEX receivers, three of which are compatible with Google’s Android Auto. We had a chance to see one of them in action at CES 2015, and while it was made clear that this was just demonstration software, the receivers are most definitely doing a great job of showing off Google’s car OS in a package that’s relatively affordable.
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We got a chance to go hands-on this morning with the Asus Zenfone 2 at CES in Las Vegas, and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that this is one of the most notable smartphones to ever come from the Taiwanese company. Forget the fact that this device is the first smartphone in the world to come with 4 GB of RAM and consider this: At $199, this device, even without its headlining feature (which the base model is notably lacking anyway), is now by far the best $199-level phone on the market.
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Hyundai has announced today that it’s working on an Android Wear app, marking another advancement in the next-generation of the company’s Blue Link system for monitoring and controlling your car remotely. The company says the the Blue Link Android app will be updated with Android Wear support at some point in “early 2015” and that it will be showcasing the app at its CES booth on January 5th.

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It’s not unusual for companies to announce what they have in store for CES in the days leading up to the show, as they would love to get as much attention as they can before the flood of announcements come next week. That’s what Archos has done today, announcing a couple of super-affordable new devices they say will help “strengthen its 4G range”: the Diamond smartphone and the 80b Helium tablet.

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The update to Android 5.0 for the Galaxy S5 has been slowly rolling out across a variety of not-United-States countries over the last month, starting with Poland and then more recently making its way to Spain. Now, preceding what will soon be the software update’s widespread availability, devices in Russia and Malaysia are being offered (via SamMobile) some Lollipop goodness.

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It has been a pretty exciting year for Google in a lot of ways. Android Wear has started to ignite excitement behind the future of wearable technology, the best version of Android ever—dubbed Lollipop—was released, a couple of brand new Nexus devices (one of which we leaked) came to fruition, and the Mountain View corporation’s new Material Design language has taken the Play Store by storm. Everything that was already great was made better in 2014, and the company has been sprinkling a bunch of exciting innovations in along the way to keep things interesting—like the self-driving car, for example.

In 2015, Google is probably going to do much the same. Android “M” (milkshake, maybe?) will likely be unveiled at Google I/O this upcoming summer, we’ll probably see a round of new Nexus hardware come later in the year, Google will likely keep pushing Chromebooks in the affordable segment of the PC market, and Android Wear devices from countless manufacturers will continue to get thinner and have better and better battery life. But Google surely has some drastic innovation planned in a variety of areas, as well, with the potential return of Google Glass on the horizon and the second spiral of Project Ara to be unveiled in a couple of weeks.

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HTC’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager Jeff Gordon has come out on Twitter to say some things about the upcoming calendar year for the Taiwanese corporation, and it sounds pretty exciting if you want to take him at his word. He’s “overwhelmingly excited” for 2015.

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Google has updated its homepage today with a cute little doodle for New Years Eve, and is paying homage to a slew of notable trending topics and human achievements from 2014. Of the most interesting things that happened this year (according to Google trends at least) were the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Flappy Bird, landing on an comet, amongst many others.
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We already know that Android 5.0 Lollipop is likely on its way to Samsung’s current lineup of devices soon (in fact, it’s already hitting devices over-the-air in Spain and Poland). But now, thanks to a post on Reddit from a user claiming to be a Samsung employee, we have a tidbit of information that pinpoints January as the month that will begin to happen in more countries around the world.

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Google Glass may seem to be essentially on the brink of death, but Google focusing on Android Wear for the time being doesn’t necessarily mean that the Mountain View company is done pursuing the area of smart glasses. In fact, Google’s Eric Schmidt recently said that it plans to bring Glass—described as if it’s going to see some kind of 2.0 rebirth—to the consumer market “soon,” but only “when it works.”

Google Glass has most definitely had a hard time capturing the imagination of the public (and the government), been met with countless criticisms thanks to its privacy implications, and generally created an image around itself that has made the device in its current form rather socially unacceptable to wear. But all this aside, Google X “moonshot” head Astro Teller says that it’s only a matter of time before glasses are the portal to our digital world.

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