The experience is redesigned and more immersive due to a greater focus on the map content instead of navigation buttons. The new map tiles also look similar to the interface included in Apple’s proprietary iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Maps software…
François Beaufort points us to Notification Center pop-ups being developed in a recent Chromium build, much like the Gmail notifications offered by its web app.
Google has updated Google+ today with a couple notable and highly requested new features for Hangouts on Air users. The first big new feature is the ability to rewind live broadcasts, allowing users to navigate back to the beginning of a broadcast regardless of when they started watching. Other improvements include higher quality video for those joining Hangouts on Air from a mobile device, as well new auto-playing broadcasts that don’t require users to refresh the page when aHangout starts.
Google did note that “it may take longer to set up your Hangout On Air. For example: the ‘Start broadcasting’ button may be grayed out for a bit, before it turns red.” That change is to provide users with enough time to get everything in place before starting the Hangout.
Google appears to have been able to implement the changes by now processing the video in real-time rather than after the fact, which also means it’s promising Hangouts will be instantly uploaded and ready to watch on YouTube the second you go off air: Expand Expanding Close
Samsung must have received a good response with its Galaxy Camera that we first got a look at last year during IFA in Berlin, as new reports suggest the company is getting ready to introduce a new camera/smartphone hybrid dubbed the “Galaxy S4 Zoom”. The report comes from the often reliable SamMobile, and suggests that Samsung is preparing to introduce the device as its first “camera phone” with a 16 megapixel camera similar to that included in the Galaxy Camera:
SamMobile says the Galaxy S4 Zoom will include a slightly smaller 4.3” qHD SAMOLED display, 8GB of onboard storage, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, A-GPS, and the latest version of Jelly Bean alongside Samsung’s Touch Wiz UI. The report also claims the device will run dual or quad-core processor but CPU and RAM specs aren’t yet finalized.
According to the report Samsung is hoping to launch its new Galaxy S4 Zoom camera smartphone sometime in June and July in both while and black variants.
Previously, Windows Phone’s YouTube app was simply a web link to the mobile site limiting the possibility of much integration.
YouTube, which is of course owned by Google, is a fundamental app addition in the Windows Phone 8 catalog, which is probably one of the platform’s weakest areas.
Previously, Windows Phone users relied on third-party apps for native support.
As Business Insider points out, Google released a new ad called “Here’s To The Moms” featuring people sending thank you notes over Gmail and sharing family videos on YouTube.
(Googlers turned Sergey Brin’s Tesla Model S into a pink Batmobile for April Fool’s Day)
According to a report from Bloomberg, Tesla’s Elon Musk has discussed with Google the possibility of adding self driving vehicle technology to its fleet of all-electric cars. The problem, says Musk, is that Google’s approach to the technology is currently too expensive compared to camera-based systems:
“The problem with Google’s current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive,” Musk said. “It’s better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what’s going on just by looking at things… “We’ve had some technical discussions with Google” about its Light Detection and Ranging, or Lidar, laser tracking system, Musk said last week, noting that it’s an expensive approach that may not prove feasible, Musk said.
Am a fan of Larry, Sergey & Google in general, but self-driving cars comments to Bloomberg were just off-the-cuff. No big announcement here
While it’s possible Google could contribute to bringing the driverless features to future Tesla vehicles, Musk told Bloomberg it’s more likely the company will develop its own “autopilot system”. That’s something that other automakers are already doing with Toyota, Lexus, and Audi all showing off self-driving car technology at CES back in January: Expand Expanding Close
After just over a year and a half since leaving TechCrunch full-time and launching CrunchFund as a partner, prominent tech columnist and investor MG Siegler announced today that he is joining the muscle investment group that is Google Venture as a general partner.
Asus CEO Jerry Shen revealed today that the company plans to ship Asus notebooks running Chrome OS later this year.
Acer, HP, and Samsung have already shipped Chromebooks ranging in price from $199 to $449, as PC World notes, which gives an idea at where Asus could price their hardware.
The Asus CEO expects Chromebook’s success to be in government and education as well as commercial use rather than with consumers.
Wired has published an interesting interview with Vint Cerf, “Father of the Internet” and Google’s chief internet evangelist. The interview focuses on Vint’s work with NASA to develop protocols for the “interplanetary internet”:
Working with NASA and JPL, Cerf has helped develop a new set of protocols that can stand up to the unique environment of space, where orbital mechanics and the speed of light make traditional networking extremely difficult. Though this space-based network is still in its early stages and has few nodes, he said that we are now at “the front end of what could be an evolving and expanding interplanetary backbone.”
…it’s actually not new at all – this project started in 1998. And it got started because 1997 was very nearly the 25th anniversary of the design of the internet. Bob Kahn and I did that work in 1973. So back in 1997, I asked myself what should I be doing that will be needed 25 years from then. And, after consultation with colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, we concluded that we needed much richer networking than was then available to NASA and other space faring agencies.
In a statement given to the BBC on Friday, Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said: “We’re changing the name ‘Palestinian Territories’ to ‘Palestine’ across our products. We consult a number of sources and authorities when naming countries. “In this case, we are following the lead of the UN, Icann [the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], ISO [International Organisation for Standardisation] and other international organisations.”
The Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomed Google’s decision.
“This is a step in the right direction, a timely step and one that encourages others to join in and give the right definition and name for Palestine instead of Palestinian territories,” Dr Sabri Saidam, advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told the BBC.”Most of the traffic that happens now happens in the virtual world and this means putting Palestine on the virtual map as well as on the geographic maps,” he added.
Agree this is a bigger deal than it would immediately appear…for Palestinians especially. The Google Maps folks aren’t yet on the same page:
While there might not be much information surrounding Google’s recent hire of Noah Falstein, the company’s decision to pick up the game design veteran as its “Chief Game Designer” certainly gives the impression Google has something big planned in the way of first party titles. TechCrunch first spotted the job title on Noah’s LinkedIn page and notes that an earlier cache of the page shows his new gig at Google used to be listed as “Chief Game Designer at Android Play Studio.” That’s a pretty good indication that whatever Falstein is working on is likely Android related.
Google of course has its feet into gaming through Google Play and Chrome apps, but it has not been active in developing its own titles for Android or Chrome OS. Falstein has worked as a game designer and producer at a number of studios over the years including LucasARTS Entertainment, DreamWorks Interactive, and the 3DO Company. More recently he has been active in developing the concept of serious games. Expand Expanding Close
Google Keep, the Evernote-like content storing app for Android, is now available for the desktop as well as a Chrome web app, bring offline support to the desktop and keeping with its web app initiative.
Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 on) has overtaken Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x) for the first time, with 28.4 percent of active Android devices now using it against 27.5 percent for ICS … Expand Expanding Close
International digital-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has delivered its annual report card of which tech companies best protect its consumer data.
Some may be surprised that both Google and Twitter top the list of companies offering the most consumer protection from governments accessing your data and transparency toward data management.
While Dropbox and LinkedIn also fair well this year, the same cannot be said for Apple, AT&T, or Yahoo.
These companies miss the mark on data protection almost across the board with exception to protecting your rights in courts or Congress.
Read the full “Who Has Your Back” report at EFF.org.
When you stage a debate on Google Glass between a self-described technology evangelist and a man who believes that current technology trends are debasing culture, things are likely to get interesting … especially when the discussion begins with the question of the etiquette of wearing the gadget at a urinal.
Check out The Next Web‘s conference video below of a conversation between Glass enthusiast Robert “I will never live a day of my life from now on without it” Scoble and British entrepreneur and privacy advocate Andrew Keen …
Google announced today on its Google+ Developers Blog that it will be working with app and site developers to integrate what it is calling “app activities” into search results. In other words, when searching for an app or site through Google search such as SoundCloud, users will now be greeted with a section to the right of search results showing related SoundCloud content that’s popular among Google+ users. Google is initially teaming up with music and movie apps Deezer, Fandango, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Songza,SoundCloud and TuneIn but plans to add more soon as the feature begins to roll out on desktops in the coming weeks.
Below Google compares the current search results for Fandango to the new improved results page with app activities: Expand Expanding Close
Robert Scoble isn’t mincing words on Google Glass. He thinks it will be big, big, big. His review after having Google Glass for two weeks reads like he’s had an epiphany and the only thing preventing these from ruling the universe is Larry Page’s inability to price these things as low as $200. His 6 points:
1. I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It’s that significant.
2. The success of this totally depends on price. Each audience I asked at the end of my presentations “who would buy this?” As the price got down to $200 literally every hand went up. At $500 a few hands went up. This was consistent, whether talking with students, or more mainstream, older audiences.
3. Nearly everyone had an emotional outburst of “wow” or “amazing” or “that’s crazy” or “stunning.”
4. At NextWeb 50 people surrounded me and wouldn’t let me leave until they had a chance at trying them. I haven’t seen that kind of product angst at a conference for a while. This happened to me all week long, it is just crazy.
5. Most of the privacy concerns I had before coming to Germany just didn’t show up. I was shocked by how few negative reactions I got (only one, where an audience member said he wouldn’t talk to me with them on). Funny, someone asked me to try them in a bathroom (I had them aimed up at that time and refused).
6. There is a total generational gap that I found. The older people said they would use them, probably, but were far more skeptical, or, at minimum, less passionate about the fact that these are the future, than the 13-21-year-olds I met.
It is important to keep in mind the context of his perspective. He’s a uber-geek who spends his life immersed in technology. Some people will find the idea of wearing a computer on your face unsettling and there undoubtedly will be backlash. The wow factor will wear off and they will have to produce some value. Right now image and video taking are the key apps. As Scoble mentioned, other apps are coming fast and furious.
And, no, I don’t believe they won’t be $200 (unless there is a subsidy like phones). If Google is charging developers $1500/pop, there is no way Google can make them for $200, at least in the near future.
All of those disclaimers aside, I really do see a lot of opportunity for Google here. They’ve thought forward and this bet on the future of technology is going to change things. Expand Expanding Close
Update: A post from Google employee Dan Morrill clarifies that, although the original developer claimed a “root is easy”, the process developers are using is actually a ‘fastboot oem unlock’. Rather than exposing a security exploit, Google has actually intentionally left Glass open for devs to tinker with, as further explained by Googler Stephen Lau:
Not to bring anybody down… but seriously… we intentionally left the device unlocked so you guys could hack it and do crazy fun shit with it. I mean, FFS, you paid $1500 for it… go to town on it. Show me something cool.
Updated 2: Founder of the Cydia jailbreak store @saurik provided some clarification on his earlier tweets, informing us that he did not use fastboot oem unlock:
Actually, my device’s bootloader is still locked: I did not use fastboot oem unlock, and in fact that would not have been useful without the source code to the Glass kernel, which was not made available until this morning. I relied on a race condition in the adb restore process, a bug that existed in Android 4.0 (and even Android 4.1). As the Glass ships with Android 4.0.4, the bug was easy to exploit. This exploit was not one that I found, to be clear (unless you count “using Google” ;P): I pulled apart an implementation by@Bin4ryDigit, and adapted it for use on Glass (which required very small modifications to the backup; the entire process of learning the exploit and fixing it took 2 hours).
Saurik later published an article explaining some of the ins and outs of the potential for writing apps for Glass and the exploit he originally took advantage of.
Have you been wondering how long until developers crack into Google Glass to provide full root access and start creating some interesting mods? It appears we might not be too far off with Google intern on the Chrome OS team and hacker Liam McLoughlin confirming on Twitter that a root might be easier than many people think (via selfscreens).
McLoughlin first tweeted that, “There’s a “debug mode” option on Glass that appears to enable ADB access. I got a shell on my Glass :D (no root yet!).” Shortly after it appears he also figured out a root method, tweeting, “looks like root is easy too: reboot-bootloader gives you fastboot oem unlock. There is fun to be had here…”
He isn’t the only one working on a root for Google Glass, hacker @chpwn tweeted today that founder of the Cydia jailbreak store @saurik is in the process of unlocking his Google Glass and Saurik later confirmed: Expand Expanding Close
Previously only available to Chromebook users, Google announced today on its Chrome blog that Mac and Windows users will now have the ability to open Microsoft Office files directly within Chrome. The functionality works for users running the latest Chrome Beta and requires installation of the Chrome Office Viewer (Beta) extension.
In addition to saving you time, the Chrome Office Viewer also protects you from malware delivered via Office files. Just like with web pages and PDFs, we’ve added a specialized sandbox to impede attackers who use compromised Office files to try to steal private information or monitor your activities.
When using Google Drive in offline mode, users will no longer have to worry about what files have been made available offline. Google will now automatically make Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides available offline as long as you have enough storage. Users will also now be able to create and edit drawings in offline mode.
The new offline features will be available to users in the coming days alongside the new group-chat and profile pictures features.
As highlighted by the patent drawing above, Google’s idea is to use see-through displays in order to make Glass look more like an ordinary, traditional pair of sunglasses. Google describes the invention as “A near-to-eye optical system includes an optically transmissive substrate having a see-through display region and a repeating pattern of diffraction elements: Expand Expanding Close
