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Pinterest rolling out new point-and-shoot visual discovery tool for mobile app called Lens 

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Pinterest is introducing a new feature for its Android app called Lens. Rolling out now as a beta feature, Lens lets you point your camera at your surroundings to discover new design ideas based on what it captures.

Just point Lens at a pair of shoes, then tap to see related styles or even ideas for what else to wear them with. Or try it on a table to find similar designs, and even other furniture from the same era. You can also use Lens with food. Just point it at broccoli or a pomegranate to see what recipes come up. Patterns and colors can also lead you in fun, interesting or even just plain weird new directions.


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Google releases Resizer web tool to test Material Design at various resolutions

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The Material Design Guidelines are considered a living document by Google’s designers and receive constant updates and new additions. To help with their recent guidelines on responsive UI, Google has released a web-based tool to see what a website looks like on various devices and at different resolutions.


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Nexus Studio Event: how Google’s 5X and 6P were created and more

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[Ed. Note: This is a rewrite of the original post which was the result of a miscommunication between editor and writer on coverage of an excellent Reddit writeup of an event. Apologies for the mistake]

Last week, Google hosted a Nexus Studio event open to the public in New York City. For three days, many teams that helped build the latest generation of Nexus phones were on hand giving talks and answering questions about the Nexus 5X and 6P. These included representatives from the Nexus industrial design, hardware, and engineering teams, Nexus software product managers, and the Android UX design team, among many others.

One Reddit user wrote up a very detailed post about all the things he learned from the “super friendly and surprisingly open” Google employees on hand. Below is a summary of the interesting information gleamed from numerous talks…


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Google asks artists to create designs for self-driving cars in new ‘Paint the Town’ campaign

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sample-2Google’s self-driving car initiative could hit the market as early as 2020, but until then Google is continuing to test its cars around Mountain View. Today, Google announced a new program that will see its self-driving cars become a little more interesting to look at. The new program, called Paint the Town, is touted by Google as being a “moving art experiment” and transforms the company’s self-driving cars into moving pieces of public art.


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Nest founder Tony Fadell talks design and habituation in newly-uploaded Ted Talk

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Tony Fadell, founder of Nest and current head of Google Glass, presented in March at TED2015 to share his thoughts and experience designing for Apple, Nest, and now Google. A few months after he first gave the talk, it has now been uploaded to YouTube and is open and viewable by everyone…

He doesn’t spend any time talking about Glass, unsurprisingly, but he does talk about now Google-owned Nest. He spends several minutes talking about how to notice things around you—things that have become daily pains—that have may be victim of habituation and worth finding a solution for.

It’s interesting and worth a watch:

HTC partners with model Jourdan Dunn to release limited edition engraved One M9 variants

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HTC-INK-Jourdan-Dunn-design_high-res-e1430323330622HTC, who this morning said that brand image is more important than volume, has announced a new partnership with supermodel Jourdan Dunn. As part of the partnership, HTC and Dunn will team up to offer limited edition variants of the HTC One M9 with custom-designed, body art-inspired engravings. An example of one of the engravings can be seen above.


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HTC’s lead designer announces his departure after less than a year

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In 2008, HTC acquired design firm One & Co to help bolster its smartphone team. Slowly but surely, however, the team has disintegrated to the point that as of tonight, only one of the design team members remains. HTC’s VP of Industrial Design, Jonah Becker, announced on Twitter tonight that he is leaving the company. Becker was named vice president less than a year ago.


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Samsung said to ditch removable battery in favor of new glass design w/ Galaxy S6

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It has been reported several times that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S6 will ditch the company’s classic all plastic design in favor of something of higher quality, which has been thought to be a metal-build. Today, however, a new report out of Korea, which should be taken with a grain of salt, says that Samsung is looking to make the Galaxy S6 out of all glass. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s how Apple designed its iPhone 4 and 4s.


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Samsung brings in new design chief from Apple designer Jony Ive’s former firm

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Samsung announced last year that, after negative reviews of the design of its Galaxy S5, its head of mobile design Change Dong-hoon was being replaced by then VP of mobile design Lee Min-hyouck. Today, however, it was revealed that the company is bringing in an outside designer to help refresh its product lineup. A report from the Korea Herald states that Samsung has hired Lee Don-tae to be its new head of design. Don-tae would lead design of all Samsung gadgets, including smartphones.


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Secret update basically copies Yik Yak, brings communities and cute new mascot

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Secret was one of the first to the anonymous social network category of apps, but Yik Yak recently took the spotlight and started really catching on with the college crowd. It appears that Secret felt a bit threatened by its university-based competitor. Today, the app has been updated with a completely new appearance, a new, cuter version of its fox mascot, and a re-imagined way of communicating with those around you anonymously.


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Quartz OS custom Linux distribution aims to bring Material Design to the desktop

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Google ushered in a new design language called Material Design as one of the biggest new elements of Android Lollipop, and an upcoming Linux distribution called Quartz OS aims to bring the clean and simplistic user interface to the desktop. Quartz OS is essentially the marriage of Material Design and Linux, aiming to harness the flexibility and power of the JavaScript-based markup language QML.
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RelativeWave acquired by Google, makes its mobile app prototyping software free for Mac

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RelativeWave, the company behind the mobile app prototyping software Form, today announced it’s joining Google. The company made an announcement on its website noting that it will continue working on the Form app and as of today make it available for free through the Mac App Store. The app previously sold for $79.
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Chinese iPhone clone maker Xiaomi investing $1B in YouTube clone

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Xiaomi, the Chinese Android manufacturer which heavily bases its product designs and marketing on Apple products, is to invest $1B in the Chinese YouTube equivalent, Youku.

Xiaomi has long been aware of the importance of an integrated hardware-and-services offering, initially selling its smartphones at cost-price in order to build market share, relying on its app store to generate profits. A tie-in with a video service makes similar sense – smartphones and tablets providing an audience for video content, and video content driving demand for devices on which to view it – but the move is likely to be primarily driven by Xiaomi’s move into the smart TV market …  
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Google Drive’s new design is now enabled by default, but users can still revert back for now

Google DriveGoogle announced on Friday that the new user interface for Google Drive, introduced in June as an opt-in experience, is now the default design for the cloud storage platform. Google Drive users can revert back to the old design through the Settings dropdown for the foreseeable future, although Google will eventually remove this option.

Following the change, users are now prompted with a “welcome to the new Google Drive” pop-up message upon loading the web-based service. The dismissible message provides a walkthrough of a number of Google Drive’s new features, including the ability to view and manage versions for non-Google file formats and add caption files or transcript files to videos.

Pushbullet for Android gets updated with snazzy Material design

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Pushbullet, the service that easily lets you send files and links around to all of your devices, just today got a huge update for Android that brings—yes, you guessed it—Material design. And with such a redesign, the way the app works has been overhauled from the ground up, bringing faster and easier navigation and sorting of pushes.


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Google Play Store app updated with Material Design interface, clearer What’s New section

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Google has updated its Play Store app with a more comprehensive Material Design makeover, and a What’s New section that is both clearer and easier to use.

Version 5.0.31 sees a new, flat Play Store logo, together with flatter icons in the sidebar, and the categories now use the bright colors of the Material Design palette … 
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Google granted yet another Glass patent, this time for a Star Trek-like visor

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Yesterday we told you about a patent that was granted to Google last week, featuring what appears to be an alternate design for Google Glass. Described as a “wearable display device,” the patent shows a pair of normal glasses with the display technology fitted on the inside—which is unlike the current model’s externally-fitted projector and prism. 
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Leaked screenshots show off revamped Play Store designs – bigger, bolder, clearer

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Here’s what the Google Play Store is likely to look like when it gets its ‘Material Design’ revamp based on the new look and feel of Android L. Google has already started rolling out the new design language on the web in the form of new pages for Docs, Sheets and Slides.

The screenshots were obtained by Android Police, which says that the redesign of the Play Store is “well underway” … 
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Google says OEMs will not be able to alter the design of Android Wear, Auto, and TV

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At Google I/O this year, the company unveiled a trio of new operating systems, Android TV, Android Auto, and Android Wear. All of these operating systems, of course, run with an interface designed by Google itself. There was doubt, however, surrounding whether manufacturers would be allowed to overlay their own interface on top, like many do with Android. While speaking with Ars Technica, Google’s engineering director David Burke put an end to our doubts and confirmed that OEMs will not be allowed to overlay their interfaces on top of Android Auto, Android TV, or Android Wear.


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