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As Regina Dugan heads to Facebook, here’s the story of her polarizing first meeting at Google

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Regina Dugan recently left her position heading up Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects group to lead a new hardware initiative at Facebook. That’s obviously not great news for Google, as Dugan was the head of many of the company’s growing ATAP projects (including Ara, the company’s ambitious modular smartphone project). But maybe it was inevitable.

Dugan’s position at Google has been a weird one from the start. Silicon Valley’s super-fast reckless “break things fast” mindset that she was quickly confronted with upon arriving at Google conflicted with her many years of experience at the United States government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Recently, she highlighted this in a story of her first meeting at Google…


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Google Store is setting up a crazy huge claw game at SXSW, and we’re going to play it

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I'm Feeling Lucky - presented by Google Store at SXSW 2016-03-10 11-16-20

Google has typically had at least a little bit of presence at SXSW in the past, but we’ve never been there to cover it. That’s changing this week, and it looks like I already have some Google-y fun to look forward to. The Silicon Valley company is heading down to the Silicon Hills to set up a huge game called “I’m Feeling Lucky,” allowing anyone to try their hand at winning some Google Store swag…


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Google says an open API is coming for Google Now cards

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Google Now Nest

As reported on by The Next Web, Google at South by Southwest this weekend gave an interesting look at its plans for Google Now. Aparna Chennapragada, Google Now’s Director of Product Management, discussed Google’s personalized predictive data service and revealed some details regarding the future of the product. Chennapragada revealed that the company soon plans to launch an open API for Google Now that will allow third-party services to integrate it into their apps.


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Talking Schmidt: If you want to have fun, then go to college!

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Inside The South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival

Photo via Bloomberg

Finally some wisdom from Schmidt that I can’t dispute: “If all you care about is having fun, you should go to college.”

You know, the Google chairman has a point. He did include a number of other reasons for attending college as well, but that was really just sugar coating:

If all you care about is money, you should go to college. If all you care about is culture and creativity, you should go to college. If all you care about is having fun, you should go to college. Go to college. I can’t be any clearer.

His comments were made during a session at last week’s SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival (via TechCrunch) in Austin, Texas, in yet another appearance to promote his book The New Digital Age.
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Samsung recruits JAY Z and Kanye West to play an exclusive concert for Galaxy owners at SXSW

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Image via <a href="http://mashable.com/2014/03/10/jay-z-kanye-west-sxsw-samsung-concerts/" target="_blank">Mashable</a>

On the heels of its Galaxy S5 product announcement, Samsung will once again enlist JAY Z to make a publicity splash for its smartphones. According to Mashable, JAY Z and Kanye West are set to perform a one-night only concert on March 12th at SXSW with entry only permitted to fans with the Milk Music app installed on a Galaxy device. The imagery on the invitation hints that the duo will revisit their raucous Watch The Throne days.

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Google confirms Android SDK for wearables coming in two weeks

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Today during a talk at a SXSW Interactive event, Google’s Android and Chrome chief Sundar Pichai apparently announced that a new Android SDK for developers interested in developing wearables will arrive in the next two weeks (via TheVerge). While Google isn’t announcing any specific products, Pichai made it clear that Google will be approaching Android on smart watches and wearables much like on smartphones. With the new SDK, Sundar said the company plans to “lay out a vision for developers as to how we’ll see this market working.” Pichai also hinted that the new Android SDK for wearables will incorporate wearables beyond simply smartwatches.

“We want to develop a set of common protocols by which they can work together,” Pichai said, “they need a mesh layer and they need a data layer by which they can all come together”… “when we say we say wearables, we are thinking much more broadly”

9to5Google first reported that Google was working on a smartwatch that would rely heavily on Google Now-like features. There have been unconfirmed reports recently that Google as well as some of its close partners like LG have been developing smart watches and wearables running Android. Google also picked up WIMM Labs late last year for its Android smartwatch/wearble platform and SDK and the most recent report claimed that a Nexus smartwatch announcement could come as soon as this month.
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Instagram coming to Android soon: ‘In some ways, it’s better than our iOS app’

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Cofounder of the leading iOS photo-sharing app “Instagram” Kevin Systrom recently announced at SXSW (via TechCrunch) that the app has now reached over 27 million registered users. He also briefly teased the highly anticipated Android version of Instagramwhich Systrom had an early build of running on his device at the show. The good news is, while we do not have a solid release date, Systrom said the company is taking its time to make sure the Android version is not just a scaled port of the iOS app:

“I don’t think it took us so long. We just had priorities. Had we tried to be both on Android and iPhone at the same time, it would’ve been tough to innovate in the way that we have”

Systrom also said the Android app is, “In some ways, it’s better than our iOS app. It’s crazy.” TechCrunch reported Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger said the Android team is “pretty impressed” with the app’s ability to differentiate itself from the iOS version. Unfortunately, the executives said the current build of the app was not ready for a full demo, which means we are likely still a few months out. We will keep you posted.

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