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Google feeds its AI machines steamy romance novels to improve natural language processing

Avatar for Cam Bunton May 5 2016 - 6:05 am PT
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Over the past couple of years, Google has been implementing a number of AI, or machine-learning technologies, in to its products. Whether it’s intuitive search within the Photos app, better automatic thumbnail creation in YouTube, ‘Smart Reply’ in Inbox, or just straight-out beating an 18-time Go world champion, its artificial intelligent brains are being developed and honed.

With all of its incredible talent, apparently, there’s still work to be done when it comes to results from neural networks sounding and looking like naturally spoken or written human language. The solution: feeding it steamy romance…


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Microsoft removes Google Search and Chrome as options from Cortana in Windows 10

Avatar for Cam Bunton Apr 29 2016 - 3:45 am PT
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In an updated post on the Windows blog, Microsoft has confirmed that it is removing the option to use any browser other than Edge, and any search engine other than Bing, as an integrated option within Cortana. That means if you want to use Cortana for launching web pages or for performing searches in Windows 10, you’ll no longer be able to use Google Chrome or Google Search.


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Google Now might have intentionally shown this man a gesture of sympathy [Video]

Avatar for Edoardo Maggio Mar 31 2016 - 2:34 pm PT
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google-now-nest

Google Now is a powerful tool. Combining the huge databases at the company’s disposal alongside the incredible amount of information it can pull – once granted access – from a customer’s usage of its many services, there are dozens of things that Google can help you with. Its power goes from answering to simple questions and completing easy requests to solving increasingly complex tasks that require a combination of the above to give more tailored and specific results.

In a somewhat curious outcome, Reddit user barney13 asked Google to show him some pictures from his trip to Nice, France, which while promptly showing the user correct results about his question also pulled out a snippet from an email which seemed oddly and yet particularly related to the request…


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Google is giving another ranking boost to mobile-friendly pages

Avatar for Stephen Hall Mar 16 2016 - 9:04 am PT
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Google announced in April of last year that it tweaked search results to give a ranking boost to sites that offer mobile-friendly versions, and now the Mountain View company is prepping to give even more ranking weight to these sites. The company is planning a change that “increases the effect of the ranking signal” for mobile searches to put even more mobile pages on the top…


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Destinations lets you plan your next vacation right from Google Search

Avatar for Cam Bunton Mar 9 2016 - 1:57 am PT
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Google Search just got a whole lot more useful for those of us who like to travel. With the new ‘Destinations’ feature you can search locations for your next trip, fine tune the search with your budget requirements and explore cities. In fact, you can virtually plan the entire trip right from within the Search user interface.


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Latest Google app beta adds OCR image recognition to Now on Tap

Avatar for Abner Li Mar 8 2016 - 9:03 am PT
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For all the features the Google app has added, it still does not have any image recognition capabilities. Google Goggles from 2010 could recognize book covers, landmarks, and even solve Sudoku, but was ultimately discontinued due to a lack of use. However, Now on Tap has gained some of those features in a recent update.


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Google patent reveals concept for real-time voting, right on the search homepage

Avatar for Cam Bunton Feb 18 2016 - 4:58 am PT
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A new patent has recently been granted to Google which conceptualizes real-time, online voting. The example used in its graphic portrays a made-up reality TV show called ‘Top American Singer’, and shows how you would only need to click on a contestant’s image to vote. No calling or texting a premium rate number required.

In the patent, it’s clear Google is imagining this would be used for things like reality shows where contestants get voted off. It would be ideal for shows like American Idol, although there is potential here that it could be used for more consequential events like a political leadership campaign.

As you’d expect from any Google Search based interface, the web page would also show news and content related to the campaign.

While it may not launch the concept as an official product, Google has long been experimenting with real-time election tracking. During the recent US political campaigns, Google’s search tool has been updating with poll results during debates.

In an age where everything appears to be heading towards being internet-based, it’s hard to imagine a future without online voting for the next state senator, US President or UK Prime Minister. Whether or not it’ll be as open and insecure as a simple Google vote is debatable. That would of course need to be a highly encrypted bespoke application, rather than a Google Search interface. But, for TV shows, the Google solution seems promising.

 

Google to comply more strictly with EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ act

Avatar for Edoardo Maggio Feb 11 2016 - 4:01 am PT
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Following a series of pressures by European regulation and privacy authorities, Google will soon start removing unwanted results from all of its domains. Despite having complied with the EU’s rules regarding the so-called ‘right to be forgotten‘ act, the search giant has so far only removed the results within the specific country’s domain.


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Longtime Search SVP Amit Singhal leaving Google after 15 years, head of AI taking over

Avatar for Abner Li Feb 3 2016 - 9:41 am PT
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Google’s longtime Senior Vice President of Search Amit Singhal is leaving the company after 15 years. In a Google+ post, he said that February 26th would be the last day and that he would be looking into philanthropy in the future. Re/Code is reporting that the Search will be merged with the company’s other artificial intelligence and machine learning efforts.


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Google search data shows what people in each state searched for most in 2015

Avatar for Abner Li Dec 28 2015 - 10:28 am PT
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The Google searches people make can reveal a great deal about their interests and concerns. When that data is aggregated, it can reveal general trends in society. For a long time, Google used such trend data to monitor for flu outbreaks for instance. Estately, a real estate blog, mined Google Trends to reveal what terms people in each state search for the most this year.
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WSJ: Google is working on an AI-powered chat service that may or may not be a new Hangouts

Avatar for Abner Li Dec 22 2015 - 1:57 pm PT
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Hangouts is widely criticized in the Android community for being slow and buggy. According to a rumor last week, SMS support is being stripped out of Hangouts in order to make the app a better chatting service. Perhaps on a related note, The Wall Street Journal is today reporting that Google has grander ambitions for the chat field and plans to infuse their artificial intelligence technology into it.


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Google’s ‘Year in Search 2015’ reveals this year’s most searched for events, objects and people

Avatar for Abner Li Dec 16 2015 - 1:51 am PT
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Google has released its annual ‘Year In Search’ video and website that highlights what people searched for most in 2015. As the year comes to a close, other Google properties like YouTube have done the same, as well as many other tech companies.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7o7R5BgWDY]

The Year in Search video is more US-centric, but has global events intertwined. The Google Trends page allows users to view the top topics searched for in 12 countries as well as more general global one. It reveals what was popular on a month by month basis and how many searches each topic received this year.

Google has also released its Top Lists from 2015 that shows the top 10 things searched for in various trending categories, like people, movies, athletes. Globally, the top search term was Lamar Odom, who is also the number one searched for person. He is followed by Charlie Hebdo (top searched global news item) and massive multiplayer game Agar.io. The full list for the top searches of 2015:

  1. Lamar Odom
  2. Charlie Hebdo
  3. Agar.io
  4. Jurassic World
  5. Paris
  6. Furious 7
  7. Fallout 4
  8. Ronda Rousey
  9. Caitlyn Jenner
  10. American Sniper

For global consumer tech, the iPhone 6S was the most searched for gadget, followed by the Galaxy S6 and Apple Watch, the only wearable to make the list. The full list is as follows:

  1. iPhone 6s
  2. Samsung Galaxy S6
  3. Apple Watch
  4. iPad Pro
  5. LG G4
  6. Samsung Galaxy Note 5
  7. Samsung Galaxy J5
  8. HTC One M9
  9. Nexus 6P
  10. Surface Pro 4

Now on Tap recognizes flight numbers, package tracking, news articles, and more languages in first major update

Avatar for Abner Li Dec 15 2015 - 8:57 am PT
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Now on Tap has been criticized for its lack of usefulness since its launch in October. Today, it’s receiving its first major update that adds new languages and now recognizes more types of information. The screenshot feature previous seen in the beta channel is also now rolling out again.


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Google Search results get Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa decorations in time for holidays

Avatar for Cam Bunton Dec 14 2015 - 7:33 am PT
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Google regularly celebrates holiday seasons by launching special little easter eggs, games and decorations across its services. This year, if it wasn’t for the Santa Tracker and Spin the Dreidel game, you’d think Google was under the impression it was Star Wars season. Turns out, that’s not the case.

Barry Schwartz spotted that Google has indeed decorated its search results in time for the holidays. Simply head to Google.com and search for ‘Christmas’, ‘Chanukah’ or ‘Kwanzaa’ and you’ll see the following imagery along with the relevant search results. All three holidays are celebrated with traditional imagery like the Menorah, Christmas Tree and the aforementioned Dreidel. (As a side note: Searching for ‘Dreidel’ or ‘Menorah’ also brings up the Chanukah decorations in Search).

While the holidays get a brief hat-tip, Star Wars has undoubtedly been the biggest focus for Google’s design team this year. With its movie franchise tie-in, Google themed virtually all of its services and launched some Star Wars editions of the Cardboard VR sets, while Motorola and Verizon teamed up to launch Star Wars DROID Turbo 2 handsets.

Accelerated Mobile Pages Project gains more partners, late February 2016 launch

Avatar for Abner Li Dec 10 2015 - 2:29 pm PT
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The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is gaining more traction as more than just publications are announcing their support to the open source project to speed up and improve mobile web pages. Many, including Google, are beginning to announce when users should begin to see AMP pages in day-to-day use.


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Whoops! Google claims ‘bug’ was pushing down competitor search results from Yelp and TripAdvisor

Avatar for Cam Bunton Nov 25 2015 - 2:50 am PT
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Over the weekend, executives from Yelp and TripAdvisor noticed that Google was pushing restaurant, or POI results from its services down in favor of its own. Neither of the popular location information services was particularly pleased to see it happening, but Google claims it was due to a “bug” and that it will be fixed…just as soon as possible!


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