Seth Weintraub

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5XoAkOuWdM

In its Explorer Story: Young Guru [through Google Glass], Google shows a lot of new features of the Google Glass upgrade and expected upgrades including the hardware addition of the stereo headphones.

We discussed Google Music hidden in the XE11 update yesterday but we’re seeing the Shazam type of song recognition, and some nice translation work as well.

Can’t wait! via

Expand
Expanding
Close

As I come up on a week of use with the LG Nexus 5, a few things become clear:

1. Tradeoffs were made to get this phone to $349. After some thought, I probably would have made the same decisions if $349 was my target price.
2. I hate carrier and manufacturer ‘improvements’ more than ever. Having a ‘pure Google‘ phone is liberating.
3. This will likely be my main Android phone for the next the year.
4. This won’t be a best seller, even if it should be because it is the best value phone we’ll see all year.

How did I draw these conclusions? Start the week ago flashback sequence…

Expand
Expanding
Close

[protected-iframe id=”492e2c57048e6da0fc41819addecc350-22427743-13611283″ info=”http://assets-polarb-com.a.ssl.fastly.net/api/v4/publishers/9to5mac/embedded_polls/iframe?pollset_id=200-nexus5iphone5s” width=”100%” height=”425″ style=”border: none;”]

The results from our Nexus 5 vs. iPhone 5s photo quality survey are in.  The winner is probably not a surprise (the iPhone 5s) but the margin may have been a bit of a surprise after so many people rated the Nexus 5 camera so poorly (and Google subsequently offered promises of fixes).

At the time we turned on the answers, the iPhone won about 55% of the votes overall from over 200,000 votes placed.

Nexus 5 − 89724  (45%)

iPhone 5S – 110828 (55%)

To check the validity of claims that the Nexus 5 has a poor shooter, we took 10 different pictures with both a Nexus 5 and the reigning champ of smartphone cameras –  the iPhone 5s.  We even split the test over two different Nexus 5s and iPhone 5s devices.  The comparison test is below. We’ll publish the results tomorrow.

Let’s see how the Nexus 5 fares against the champ:

[protected-iframe id=”492e2c57048e6da0fc41819addecc350-22427743-13611283″ info=”http://assets-polarb-com.a.ssl.fastly.net/api/v4/publishers/9to5mac/embedded_polls/iframe?pollset_id=200-nexus5iphone5s” width=”100%” height=”425″ style=”border: none;”]

Expand
Expanding
Close

Jason Schwartzman and Reggie Watts are hosting the new event which is meant to take on the big players in the music industry. Spike Jonze is directing and Lady Gaga, Eminem, Avicii and Arcade Fire will be making appearances.

Update: The show is over, see what you missed here.

HP and Google combined to create two new Chromebooks which were launched early last month: The $299  Intel Haswell-powered Chromebook 14 and the smaller Samsung Exynos ARM-powered Chromebook 11. Both machines mark new territory for Google and HP. The Silicon Valley neighbors have been getting closer and closer since Meg Whitman took over as CEO, including an expanding array of Android tablets as well. The initial HP Chromebooks were clearly re-purposed Windows laptops. These clearly are something entirely different…
Expand
Expanding
Close

Bloomberg reports that Google and other Valley companies are contributing “dozens of computer engineers and programmers to help the Obama administration fix the U.S. health-insurance exchange website.”

The help is arriving as the government’s main site to offer health insurance remains plagued by repeated outages a month after its Oct. 1 debut. Among those assisting are Michael Dickerson, a site reliability engineer on leave from Mountain View, California-based Google, and Greg Gershman, the innovation director for smartphone application maker Mobomo, according to a government official who asked not to be identified because the moves haven’t been made public.

The Google engineers are in for a rude awakening when they see the government cafeterias. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

Most folks connect the best speakers in their house up to the TV.  If you are like most folks and a Pandora listener/Chromecast user, some good news today: Pandora is now available on the $35 Chromecast. You can now stream your music from your Android smartphone or tablet directly to your TV and theoretically to those awesome speakers attached.

The Pandora App for Android was also updated with an improved Tablet interface today.

Google apparently isn’t stressed about Pandora taking away from its $8/month All-access Play service which gives users more control over what they listen to. Recent Chromecast converts include Hulu.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Droid life spotted an update the the Moto X site which includes a temporary/now removed “Moto G” Menu item.  The “G” has appeared in trademark applications and it is speculated to either be a smaller “Mini” version of the X, a Google Play version of the X or something entirely different – like an accessory.

The fact that it hit the website probably means we wont have to wait terribly long to find out.

For the record, we’ve heard Google/Motorola is working on some pretty cool stuff including a set “smart headphones”.
Expand
Expanding
Close

The state of New York announced that Google donated 17,000 Nexus 7 tablets on the one year anniversary of the tragic Superstorm Sandy.  The $2.7 million worth of Nexus 7s (/17,000=$158/ea=v1) are likely to go to community centers, training programs and libraries:

• Libraries will use the tablets in job training, work skills and English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages classes, and as e-reader loaners in the areas where libraries are not yet reopened
• Small business development organizations plan to integrate tablets into onsite business assistance and training classes. The organizations will also provide assistance to a high school entrepreneurship program run in about 30 underserved schools in New York City by New York State Small Business Development Centers.
• To help combat senior isolation, senior centers will employ tablets in teaching seniors to use video chatting and other electronic communication services as a way to keep them connected to their friends and families.
• Community centers will be able to use tablets in their programs to move young people living in poverty towards STEM and other high-skilled careers, as well as to assist their parents gain and improve technology-based job skills.

New York Politicians and former New York Politicians who now work for Google had nice things to say:

“It has been almost a year since New York went through the worst natural disaster in our history but for many of our state’s residents who are still building back the generosity of companies like Google can make a huge difference,” Governor Cuomo said. “Private donations like these are critical in aiding local communities in our ongoing recovery. We thank Google for helping New York build back better than before.”

“Google is proud to partner with Governor Cuomo and the New York State Community Action Agencies on this hardware donation,” said former New York Congresswoman Susan Molinari, Vice President for Government Relations at Google. “We believe that technology can and does play a compelling role in rebuilding communities to make them more resilient and stronger. Increasingly, more and more people are using technology and the internet to educate themselves or provide for their families. Our hope is that these tablets will be a resource to do just that.”

“I applaud Google and Governor Cuomo for coordinating a donation that focuses on strengthening our communities,” said New York Secretary of State Cesar A. Perales, who Governor Cuomo placed as Hurricane Sandy Donations Coordinator. “The New York Department of State is proud to have played a role in assisting Google in this donation.”

More details in the press release below:
Expand
Expanding
Close

If you want to join the hangout, head over here.

Update: looks like Google is about 15 minutes late and counting.

Two weeks ago, we ran a report titled: ‘Google Watch is happening soon, heavy into Kit Kat/Google Now functionality‘

Google is focusing on longer battery life and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity.

The WSJ is now “hearing the same things” (video below)

•  Google Inc.’s smartwatch is in late-stage development and the company is in talks with Asian suppliers to begin mass production of the device
• The smartwatch will be able to communicate with other devices such as a smartphone, and draw information such as travel schedules from a user’s email through Google Now
• With its wristwatch, Google is aiming to address two criticisms of smartwatches that skeptics have long made: usefulness and battery life.

Uncanny.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Nexus 5 shipments arrive in LG’s Canada warehouse according to this forum via Reddit via phandroid. According to the poster, there will be over 30,000 devices available at launch.

Could this thing possibly leak any harder? The saga, below:

• New leaked shots of LG Nexus show KitKat startup screen, other details (9to5google.com)
• Nexus 5 to “match or beat” iPhone 5s graphics performance – preliminary benchmarks (9to5google.com)
• Upcoming Nexus 5 leaks in white, Nov. 1 launch date reported (9to5google.com)
• New LG trademarks point to possible upcoming ChromeOS devices (9to5google.com)
• Another Nexus 5 press shot leaks (9to5google.com)
• Report claims Nexus 5 will land for $299/$399 with larger battery in 32GB model (9to5google.com)
• Photos and tech specs of next-generation Nexus phone appear in leaked service manual (9to5google.com)
• Another image of the Nexus 5 shows up, still looks the same (9to5google.com)
• Leaked renders reveal LG’s upcoming G Flex curved-glass smartphone (9to5google.com)
• 16 GB Nexus 5 appears on Google Play for $349 (high-res photo) (9to5google.com)

(image via Electrek.co)

Depends on the human, amirite?

Once the realm of futurists, driverless cars are now on par with humans and often doing better according to recent data presented at robotics conference in Santa Clara, California by Chris Urmson, leader of Google’s autonomous-car project. The claims emanate from two studies of data from the hundreds of thousands of miles Google’s vehicles have logged on public roads in California and Nevada.

“We’re spending less time in near-collision states,” claimed Urmson. “Our car is driving more smoothly and more safely than our trained professional drivers.”

There’s a lot more at MIT Technology Review on the data and its implications.

The inevitable uptake of driverless cars by consumers will be interesting to watch with other vehicle visionaries like Tesla CEO Elon Musk advocating for a stepped “Auto-Pilot” type of rollout where 90% of driving is autonomous with the last 10% done by the driver.

The two views aren’t mutually exclusive because of Google’s override capability which is similar to how Airplane pilots operate auto-pilot. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

From Electrek:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmQb94EF1UY&start=2220]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk was speaking in Germany when he caught a question about developing Apps for the Model S car. Musk said that it was likely that Tesla would open up an Android emulator after it did other things like localization and upgrading the browser to Chrome.

The Model S 17-inch capacitive display currently runs on Linux so porting Android or even iOS apps isn’t incredibly hard.

He also called Fuel Cells “Such Bullshit”
Expand
Expanding
Close

We got quite a nasty letter in the mail from our Adsense reps today. It is pasted below:

The problem was that someone in our forums had posted a link to”Your Sound” an iOS App Store app which allows people to download Youtube videos (we deleted the post but screenshot is below the fold). This move seems to be part and parcel to Google’s statement that it  would cut funding from crooks.  Your Sound has since been removed from the App Store and there would be no way of getting this app from the post in any case.

Still, for mentioning a YouTube downloader, we could lose a revenue stream. That doesn’t quite seem fair.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Everything about the new Kindle HDX is better than the previous HD version. The screen is brighter and has more pixels. It is lighter, thinner, has a better case, and has an improved OS. The buttons are now around the back vs. on either side (which takes a few reps to get used to). You can now jump down to the apps in much similar way to what you can in a normal Android tablet.

But that’s the problem. The OS just isn’t as good as the one you’ll find on the Nexus 7 with similar specs. And with the Nexus 7 you’ll get Google’s extremely productive Google Apps including Google Now, Google Maps, Gmail, Translate, and on and on. With the Kindle line you get a lot of nice apps, including many of the more popular ones like Facebook, Hulu, Netflix.  But you don’t get any of the long tail apps you get from the Google Play Store, and that’s kind of a bummer.

Also, I’m personally not feeling the Mayday feature. It was probably awesome when there were only 20 reviewers getting service, but I had to wait on hold for around 10 minutes before I could talk to someone – for me, that’s not worth it. Your mileage will vary, obviously.

Amazon has a ton of good content including a very passable App selection, full music and movie libraries, and of course tons of ebooks.  If you are okay with just Amazon, then you are looking at the best tablet you can find.  If you want more, then head over to Google Play. Pricing options below. 

I recently heard word that Google was putting the finishing touches on a Watch product. Details are slim but the person seemed to think that Google Now functionality would be at the center of the product.

Thinking about this, Google could put a lot of the functionality of Google Glass in the watch product. Push a button, ask a question, get a response as the watch talks to the Now-enabled smartphone.  Also, the ‘serendipitous’ information that Google Now shows you on your phone could come up in the watch. Time to get home, Calendar alarms, emails, SMSes, etc. all could get pushed to the watch’s display

Google is focusing on longer battery life and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. There was no word on the type of sensors and health monitoring functionality that Apple is rumored to be working on.

We’d heard earlier some details from Artem Russakovskii, which I can’t confirm, but considering my info now bears repeating:

Google will announce a Nexus watch, codenamed Gem, likely together with the KitKat announcement. The date I have, which, once again, is about a month old, is also October 31st.

My source also seemed to think “sooner rather than later.”

Google acquired WIMM Labs, an Android based Smartwatch SDK developer last year for an undisclosed sum. The company’s Smartwatch App store is still live here and contains some notable apps including Facebook.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg6IFhOBpq0]

This is the most we’ve seen of the LG Nexus 5 and the Android 4.4 Kit Kat OS.  All we need now is a release date.

Size comparison between Nexus 7, iPhone 5s and Galaxy Note 2 and S4

“Is that a Samsung Galaxy Mega in your pocket?”, is how the joke usually starts.  Samsung, never content with having the biggest phone out there, released its crazy ‘Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3‘ contraption with a whopping 6.3″ display on AT&T customers in the US recently and I wanted to see if I could actually get by with it, and it alone, as not only my “Internet Communicator” but also my phone.

I should probably preface this with the fact that I’m a very sparse phone user. I rarely give my number out and even when I get a call, I rarely answer it. When I’m at my desk, I use Google Voice, Hangouts, Skype and iChat for voice communications. When I’m on the road, I’m on a cheap unlimited data plan which affords me 100 minutes of talk time a month. I usually use about half of that IYSWIM.

So with that in mind, how were my few weeks with the Mega?

Expand
Expanding
Close