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Photo: phandroid.com

Chinese site MyDrivers (comical Google Translate warning) is citing Korean sources suggesting that the Nexus 5, next year’s replacement for the Nexus 4, will be made by LG and based on the G2. An earlier rumor suggested that the handset would be made by Motorola.

It has already been rumored that LG would be making next year’s Nexus 7 … 
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Google announced today that its recently launched Nexus 7 is now available to purchase in Canada through Google Play. The availability comes as the device launches in Staples, Best Buy, Future Shop and other retailers today in both the US and Canada, while the device has already been available to customers in the US through Google Play.

For those in Canada, the next generation @Nexus 7 can now be yours: http://t.co/JBfO2nnVoF

— Google Play (@GooglePlay) August 13, 2013

The refreshed Nexus 7 is available for $229 for the 16GB WiFi model and $269 for the 32GB model with both models listed as shipping in 1-2 business days. An LTE version of the new Nexus 7 is expected in the weeks to come but Google hasn’t provided an official launch date.

Google also started selling a new Nexus 7 sleeve on the Google Play today for $29.99 in both the US and Canada.

Photo: chromespot.com

When Google announced (and later began rolling out) conversational search back in May, the company saw that as only the start. The company’s plans for the feature take us all the way into the realms of a true virtual personal assistant.

If you haven’t yet tried conversational search in Chrome, the feature as it stands is useful but basic. Speak a search like “How old is Barack Obama?” and Chrome will speak the answer. With a person, you could then ask a series of follow-up questions like “How tall is he?”, “Who is his wife?” and “How old is she?” and they would know who you were referring to in each question. That’s the functionality Google is rolling out, remembering who or what you just asked about and interpreting pronouns appropriately.

But Google’s long-term plans are far more ambitious. In an interview with TechFlash, Google Research Fellow Jeff Dean talked to Jon Xavier about his team’s work on machine learning and neural nets to expand Google’s abilities in conversational search … 
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Photo: dailymail.co.uk

Larry Ellison is apparently still smarting from the court battle he lost back in May of last year when he accused Google of copyright infringement over its use of Java in Android, lost and ended up paying Google’s $4M court costs.

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Oracle bought Java from Sun Microsystems, and claimed ownership of some of the code used by Google. Google argued that the small amount of replicated code was ‘fair use’ and that the rest of it was coded from scratch simply using similar approaches to Java. Oracle lost.

In an interview with CBS’s Charlie Rose, transcribed in Business Insider, Ellison accuses Page of violating Google’s company slogan, Don’t be evil. Transcript below the fold … 
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According to a new report from Geek.com, Google will be dropping Samsung and picking ASUS to manufacture the next-gen Nexus 10. The site has correctly reported on a few product releases in the past, but today’s report goes against what we heard earlier straight from Google’s own Sundar Pichai. 
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Google announced today on the official search blog that it is rolling out a new feature in search results that will help users to easier find in-depth articles on a varying number of topics. While Google has been working over the last year to include more quick answers and information directly in search results, it estimates that around 10% of its users are instead looking for in-depth information for queries. Starting over the next few days, users will now see a selection of in-depth articles in a new section for certain search topics (as pictured above):

If you care about censorship, you’ll find a thought-provoking article by Salman Rushdie in The New Yorker, a piece by our very own Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen in the Guardian, and another greatarticle about Iran. If you’re in the mood for something lighter, search for [lego], you’ll find great in-depth articles about many different facets of the topic from gender to engineering to art. For some more examples, check out new search results for population growth, capital punishment and e-waste.

Google says that the new section will include articles from well-known publishers, lesser-known publications and blogs.

The company has a help page here for publications interested in optimizing their site for the new feature, and also outlines restricted content including some subscription-based access websites that don’t offer “first click free” access to new readers.

Before Google I/O 2012, Android tablets hadn’t been all that successful, due in large part to their high price and lack of serious support from Google. Then, however, Google introduced the $199 Nexus 7 tablet and started a battle of who could make the best, most affordable tablet. More than a year later, it’s quite clear that Google was the winner of that battle. Other manufacturers could not release an affordable tablet that was worth buying– and its biggest 7-inch competitor, the iPad mini, remains a full $100 above the Nexus 7’s asking price.

When the first rumors hit claiming that the device would cost $229, $30 more than the original model, I was a tad worried, but once Google officially announced the specifications, all that worry went away. The new Nexus 7 improves on its predecessor in just about every way imaginable. It has a faster processor, higher resolution screen, a new rear camera, the latest version of Android, and more. All that doesn’t necessarily mean the device is better, however. Is the Nexus 7 still king of the Android tablet market? Can it compete with the iPad mini?

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In an effort to improve its local reviews and compete with services like Yelp, Google has just launched a new service dubbed City Experts (via Engadget). The network is open to users on Google+ who have reviewed at least 50 places already and are located in select cities  in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Japan. In order to remain in good standing, City Experts must provide at least five new reviews each month that meet Google’s guidelines of being well written, are three or four sentences long, and include an image.

Are you an expert on all the best places to eat, shop and play in your city? If so, then we want you to join the Google City Expert program and start receiving exclusive perks! The Google City Expert program brings together the most active users on Google Maps who write reviews and upload photos of local places. A

Those who meet all of these guidelines will be rewarded with exclusive invites to local events, “special online recognition”, and “custom swag”, which is Google-branded items.

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There are some projects that are so cool they send a little shiver down your spine, and for me this is one of those. It shows OpenGlass testing two Glass projects aimed at visually-impaired users.

Question-Answer allows someone to ask what an object is, receive an answer from Twitter users and then hear that answer spoken. Memento allows a sighted user to teach Glass to recognise objects, and will then tell a visually-impaired user what they are looking at … 
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Variety has the scoop:

“We are actively working with Google to bring Hulu Plus to the platform,” Hulu rep Meredith Kendall said. “At Hulu, we’re constantly innovating to provide our users with access to their favorite TV shows anytime, anywhere, on any device.”

What a stark contrast to when GoogleTV was released and Hulu blocked, yes BLOCKED, Google TVs from accessing Hulu content.  Yes, a few years makes a big difference and Hulu has since gotten comfortable on set top boxes, but I think the model where Google puts content owners in control has struck a chord with content distributors. They are 100% in control of what goes on Chromecast.

“Here’s how you put your content on a Chromecast. They are $35 and going to be everywhere. Do what you want” works.

Vimeo, HBO, Redbox, and many others are also jumping on board.
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That $35 stick is looking less and less like a novelty item and more and more like a serious option for those looking to view content on their TV as developer Koushik Dutta has created an Android app to allow both photos and video to be streamed from a smartphone … 
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After a brief announcement back in June that it had partnered with Starbucks to offer free, unlimited music through its new Google Play All Access streaming service, Google today announced that it will soon be supplying WiFi to all Starbucks locations in the US. That also includes its new gigabit Google Fiber internet service where available:

When your local Starbucks WiFi network goes Google, you’ll be able to surf the web at speeds up to 10x faster than before. If you’re in a Google Fiber city, we’re hoping to get you a connection that’s up to 100x faster.

Up until now, AT&T provided free Wifi access to Starbucks customers in the US (and T-Mobile before that), but it appears that will no longer be the case following the roll out of Google’s networks in the coming weeks.

Google plans to start rolling out its new Starbucks networks next month and hopes to have all 7,000 US locations up and running on its networks within 18 months. Google noted, “You’ll know your new network is ready to go when you can log in to the “Google Starbucks” SSID.”
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While all eyes may be on the new Nexus 7, those with 2012 models may want to hold fire before handing over their cash for the shiny new model. AnandTech (via GigaOM) reveals that an upgrade to Android 4.3 could give the older model a whole new lease of life.

One of the common complaints late in the life of the original Nexus 7 was slow storage I/O performance, leading to an inconsistent user experience. After a fresh flash, the Nexus 7 was speedy and performant, but after months of installing applications and using the tablet, things began slowing down. This was a friction point that many hoped would be fixed in the new Nexus 7 (2013) model, which it was. There’s even more to the story though, it turns out Google has fixed that storage I/O ageing problem on all Nexus devices with the Android 4.3 update … 
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Google’s new $35 Chromecast device has huge potential in a living-room environment, but as PC World notes, the device also could be a major player in the enterprise market as a presentation tool. If you have to give a presentation now, it’s tricky to make sure you have the right converters to connect to the projector at the office, and if you get there and it turns out you needed VGA, not DVI, you’re in big trouble. With the Chromecast, all you would have to do is bring it to your meeting and have your documents stored in Google Drive. From there you can cast all of your Chrome tabs to the big screen with no issues.

The Chromecast would also be the perfect device to take on a family outing, as it would allow you to easily watch Netflix content on any TV with an HDMI connection at your hotel.

While it may take a little work to get all your documents in Google Drive, the process has gotten simpler and simpler over time and with more businesses switching to Google Apps anyway, there’s no reason not to use a Chromecast in the office. 
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As expected, Google finally took the wraps off its new Nexus 7 tablet yesterday during its breakfast with Chrome and Android chief Sundar Pichai. While there was no mention of a possible update to its 10-inch Nexus, it appears Pichai has since confirmed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati that a new version of the device would be arriving in the “near future”:

Expect to see new 10-inch Nexus 10 Android tablet (made by @Samsung) in the near future, Google's @sundarpichai tells me

— Amir Efrati (@amir) July 24, 2013

While we haven’t been hearing much about a new Nexus 10, which was first introduced back in October, we did recently hear that Samsung was working on an octa-core Nexus 11 alongside a new 11-inch Galaxy Tab for later this year. Pichai apparently confirmed that next-gen Nexus 10 would again be made by Samsung, and “near future” seems to indicate we’ll likely see the device shipping with the latest version of Android 4.3 sometime later this year.