Today's smartphones are capable of incredible things, but only if they've got enough battery power.
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Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Monday, 30 September 2013
Friday, 27 September 2013
Google Updating Android Apps En Masse Ahead of KitKat
Today's smartphones are capable of incredible things, but only if they've got enough battery power.
Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.Friday, 20 September 2013
Google to tackle aging, illness with new company
September 19, 2013 03:05 PM ETComputerworld - Google is reaching out beyond search, Android, Maps and even computerized glasses. The Internet company is putting its considerable muscle behind healthcare with a particular focus on aging and the diseases that accompany it. 
Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.
"OK ... so you're probably thinking wow!" wrote Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google, in a Google+ post. "That's a lot different from what Google does today. But as we explained in our first letter to shareholders, there's tremendous potential for technology more generally to improve people's lives. So don't be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses."
On Wednesday, Google announced a new company, dubbed Calico, that will focus on the somewhat amorphous subjects of health and well-being, though with a particular focus on aging and its related diseases.
Arthur D. Levinson, the chairman and CEO of Genentech and the current chairman of Apple, will be the CEO and a founding investor for Calico.
"For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking," said Apple CEO Tim Cook, in a statement . "Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn't have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results."
In his Google+ post, Page said he's excited to tackle the issue of aging and its related illnesses.
"These issues affect us all -- from the decreased mobility and mental agility that comes with age, to life-threatening diseases that exact a terrible physical and emotional toll on individuals and families," he wrote. "And while this is clearly a longer-term bet, we believe we can make good progress within reasonable timescales with the right goals and the right people."
Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, told Computerworld that he doesn't find healthcare or medical research to be too far out of Google's realm. The company just might have the money and muscle to make serious research inroads.
"Google is great at analyzing large amounts of data and so much of medical research, in many ways, is data analytics," Kerravala said. "They have the resources and they have the analytical capabilities. One of the things that always holds back medical research is resources and funding, of which, Google has plenty."
Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said it makes sense for Google to dive into medical research. Google is all about gathering, analyzing and distributing information. Health care also is information based.
"Google seems to be able to maintain its main business, while dabbling elsewhere. It's called delegation," said Gottheil. "Google thinks if it can be done with intelligence, engineering and computer hardware, they can do it."
This article, Google to tackle aging, illness with new company, was originally published at Computerworld.com.
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at 
@sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed 
. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.
See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.
Read more about Healthcare IT in Computerworld's Healthcare IT Topic Center.
Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.Read now.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Exploring Google Search's tenuous relationship with pirated content
According to a recently released paper "How Google Fights Piracy" (available here as a Google Doc), the search giant claims that fans intent on pirating media use pirate sites rather than search. Despite Google's insistence that its search function is not the preferred doorway to copyrighted content, Mountain View says it "has taken steps to prevent terms closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete and Related Search."
The exact whats and hows of Google's search algorithm has long been shrouded in mystery, but I found it to be particularly foggy when it comes to playing around to searching specific terms related to the copyright-free lifestyle.
Last week the British Music Industry trade group, BPI requested for Google to block a number of URLs from its search function, citing copyright infringement. Included in the list of rouge sites were several urls from the torrent-search site The Pirate Bay.
Of the 2056 URLs that BPI asked to have removed—including 171 from The Pirate Bay—only one had no action taken against it: The Pirate Bay's current homepage, www.piratebay.sx.
Why? Google doesn't say specifically, but it's probably because although the TPB homepage allows users to search for torrents that no doubt contain pirated property, The Pirate Bay's front page itself does not actually list or contain any copyright-protected information.
The Pirate Bay homepage. According to Google's compliance FAQ page:
It is our policy to respond to clear and specific notices of alleged copyright infringement. Upon review, we may discover that one or more URLs specified in a copyright removal request clearly did not infringe copyrights. In those cases we will decline to remove those URLs from Search.
This isn't so newsworthy, as BPI is one of the most active senders of DMCA requests, and The Pirate Bay is one of the most targeted DMCA takedown recipients. (According to Google, TPB has had nearly 460 thousand URLs requested to be removed.) However, despite the fact that Google has determined that The Pirate Bay's front page should remain indexable and available, Mountain View has constructed a strange maze of semantic filters regarding "The Pirate Bay" and other pirate sites within its autocomplete functions.
In 2009, Google completely removed The Pirate Bay from its search index, only to eventually return TPB's homepage to searchability. The Pirate Bay is currently available through Google, but remains somewhat hidden via the site's autocomplete function. For example, on the US Google site, searching the term "The Pirate Bay" will not bring up the site's front page in Google's autocomplete results.
Meanwhile, the autocomplete for the conjoined url phrase "thepiratebay" will bring up some sketchy sites (that you should NOT click on) rather than TPB's official site. However, if you add in a period to your search ("thepiratebay."), the Pirate Bay's homepage will magically appear in the main search field below the bar.
Meanwhile, search for a phrase like like "the pirate bay eminem", "the pirate bay ironman" or "the pirate bay sisterhood of the travelling pants 2" will all return relevant torrent searches within The Pirate Bay. While the returns will not be available in the main search field until you click it, this is a curious loophole in the Mountain View's search filtering algorithm.
Meanwhile, the top-level urls for sites included in BPI's most recent DCMA request, such as for mp3chief.com, will autocomplete on the US Site when you search for the terms "MP3 Chief" or "mp3chief" in autocomplete with associated links in the returns page below the search bar.
In fact, Google autocomplete worked for many (but not all) urls included in BPI's DMCA request including, nakido.com (under search term "nakido"), free-albums.net ("free-albums"), and indowebster.com ("indowebster").
According to Google's autocomplete FAQ, the autocomplete terms are the algorithm-driven result of "search activity from all web users and the content of web pages indexed by Google." Google also readily acknowledges that the autocomplete function is does not roam completely unchecked. In addition to filtering out "objectionable" material such as pornography, violence, or hate speech in the autocomplete function, the company filters out terms that "are frequently used to find content that infringes copyrights."
Google's position on its autocomplete function becomes even more curious when you consider how it relates to porn searches. If you were search for the domain name of a well-known pornography site—which Google explicitly says it will filter though its autocomplete—it will not turn up in autocomplete. This is true for a number of sites I tried with seemingly innocuous url names. Unlike The Pirate Bay searches, you will not receive a proper autocomplete even if you conjoin the words together and include the period afterwards. Try it if you're at home on a work computer—assuming you know the name of at least one adult site.
We have contacted Google for clarification on their autocomplete functionality and will update when and if we receive any response.
Evan lives in Brooklyn, NY and enjoys writing about what future may hold and taking long romantic walks on the beach.
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Thursday, 5 September 2013
Phone makers roll their own operating systems as Google and Microsoft close ranks
Sometimes, you can’t help but pay attention to what the man behind the curtain is doing. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced plans to acquire Nokia’s device and services business for more than $7 billion, effectively seizing control of the entire Windows Phone experience, from software to hardware to services.
Just like that, the companies behind every major smartphone operating system now compete directly with their manufacturing partners. And while Google erected a "firewall" between Android and Motorola when it bought the handset maker in 2012, Microsoft has no plans to separate Nokia from the core Windows Phone business. It’s full steam ahead for Microsoft-made smartphones as Redmond tries to single-handedly turn Windows Phone from an also-ran into a contender.
Topsy wants to become the Google of Twitter search
Searching through Twitter’s archive of tweets can be frustrating—they are sorted on the site by Twitter’s own algorithms, and older tweets tend to get buried. Google? Forget it. Topsy, an analytics company, wants to do it better.
The San Francisco-based company announced Wednesday that it has indexed Twitter’s complete archive of public tweets dating back to 2006, giving users simple tools to search through it.
President Barack Obama’s first tweet? According to Topsy, it was posted six years ago and read: “Thinking we’re only one signature away from ending the war in Iraq.”
People can use the tools for free at Topsy.com. The site offers more advanced paid tools that can be used, for instance, if marketers want to track the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
Topsy is not new to this game. The company was founded in 2007, already offering tools for finding and analyzing data from the public social Web across millions of websites. Before Wednesday’s announcement, the site indexed Twitter tweets as far back as 2010.
The company describes its service as a way for marketers, agencies and consumers to extract meaningful signals from the social media noise.
But by indexing Twitter’s complete archive, Topsy is hoping to make it easier for the average person to find social data like tweets, links, photos and videos across the Web.
Known as “social search,” it’s an area that has been difficult for the major players like Facebook and Google to crack.
Facebook’s goal is to “make the world more open and connected,” but searching for content from outside the site is difficult when members use different privacy settings to share things only with certain people. The social network is trying to make a better search tool for users with Graph Search.
Google previously offered a way to search for information from people on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other sites through its Real-Time Search tool, but the feature was discontinued in 2011.
Microsoft is trying to do more with social search through its Bing search engine. The site incorporates data from outside social networks such as Facebook and Twitter into how it displays search results involving people. But Bing still occupies a much smaller slice of the overall search pie compared to Google.
The Library of Congress is also trying to archive all of America’s tweets.
Some of Topsy’s competitors include DataSift and Gnip.
Being able to easily analyze users’ activity on Twitter is also becoming increasingly important as the site aims to boost revenues with a possible IPO looming. Last month Twitter said it would be tracking users’ tweets to measure marketers’ sales in physical stores.
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Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Microsoft takes aim at Google with Nokia's mapping apps
IDG News Service - Microsoft wants to build a better mobile phone through its acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business. One way it hopes to do that? By improving its maps apps to better compete against Google's.
"An effective alternative to Google," and "more than one digital map of the world" is needed, Microsoft said in a presentation on the strategic rationale for the deal, which was posted to the company's website.
Microsoft will acquire several new mapping and location services as part of its acquisition of Nokia's Devices & Services business, announced Tuesday.
Chief among them are Nokia's HERE Drive, HERE Maps and HERE Transit. All three were designed to help people travel more efficiently and reduce carbon emissions in the process.
HERE Transport was geared toward public transportation, offering public transportation route planning in hundreds of cities around the world, according to the Nokia Apps & Services landing page.
HERE Maps and HERE Drive, meanwhile, were designed to help people in cars "plot the most optimal route to their destination," Nokia said.
The three mapping apps were made available for all Windows 8 smartphones in July.
Microsoft's Bing search engine already offers mapping services such as public transportation routes. And last year, Bing grew the number of indoor places indexed by its Venue Map product in the U.S. and internationally, through a partnership with Nokia.
Through the Nokia acquisition announced Tuesday, Microsoft "gets [the] flexibility to integrate HERE with other experiences," the company said. Microsoft declined to comment on how exactly Nokia's mapping services might be integrated into other Microsoft products, or which products.
The acquisition gives Microsoft rights equivalent to ownership for the HERE mapping apps, Microsoft said on its website, noting that Nokia will continue to improve the apps for other platforms.
"Geospatial" imagery and location services, and mapping, are "essential to integrate for mobile," Microsoft said.
Google is a dominant player in mapping and location services. It is continually improving its Maps app too -- most recently through adding real-time traffic reports. Those features and others came following the company's acquisition of the crowdsourced mapping app developer Waze.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched a probe in June into possible antitrust issues related to the Waze acquisition.
Google could not be immediately reached to comment on Microsoft's mapping plans.
Apple is also looking to become a stronger competitor in mapping services. The company reportedly acquired app developer Embark late last month. Embark makes a mobile mapping app to help people navigate mass transit systems, similar to how Nokia's HERE products work.
Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com
Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.Google posts, and pulls, video that may have revealed the Nexus 5
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Microsoft takes aim at Google with Nokia's mapping products
Microsoft wants to build a better mobile phone through its acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone business. One way it hopes to do that? By improving its maps applications to better compete against Google’s.
“An effective alternative to Google,” and “more than one digital map of the world” is needed, Microsoft said in a presentation on the strategic rationale for the deal, which was posted to the company’s website.
Microsoft will acquire several new mapping and location services as part of its acquisition of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, announced Monday.
Chief among them are Nokia’s HERE Drive, HERE Maps (shown above) and HERE Transit. All three were designed to help people travel more efficiently and reduce carbon emissions in the process.
HERE Transport was geared toward public transportation, offering public transportation route planning in hundreds of cities around the world, according to the Nokia Apps & Services landing page.
HERE Maps and HERE Drive, meanwhile, were designed to help people in cars “plot the most optimal route to their destination,” Nokia said.
The three mapping apps were made available for all Windows 8 smartphones in July.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine already offers mapping services such as public transportation routes. And last year, Bing grew the number of indoor places indexed by its Venue Map product in the U.S. and internationally, through a partnership with Nokia.
Through the Nokia acquisition announced Monday, Microsoft “gets [the] flexibility to integrate HERE with other experiences,” the company said. Microsoft declined to comment on how exactly Nokia’s mapping services might be integrated into other Microsoft products, or which products.
The acquisition gives Microsoft rights equivalent to ownership for the HERE mapping apps, Microsoft said on its website, noting that Nokia will continue to improve the apps for other platforms.
“Geospatial” imagery and location services, and mapping, are “essential to integrate for mobile,” Microsoft said.
Google is a dominant player in mapping and location services. It is continually improving its Maps app too—most recently through adding real-time traffic reports. Those features and others came following the company’s acquisition of the crowdsourced mapping app developer Waze.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission launched a probe in June into possible antitrust issues related to the Waze acquisition.
Google could not be immediately reached to comment on Microsoft’s mapping plans.
Apple is also looking to become a stronger competitor in mapping services. The company reportedly acquired app developer Embark late last month. Embark makes a mobile mapping app to help people navigate mass transit systems, similar to how Nokia’s HERE products work.
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Tuesday, 3 September 2013
Sync Google Earth placemarks across different PCs
Dick uses Google Earth on more than one PC. He asked how to sync placemarks between them.
Oddly enough, Google's extensive cloud services don't do much for Earth (the program, not the planet--although it probably doesn't do much for that, either). You'd expect that if you have a Youtube, Gmail, or other Google account, Earth would sync automatically. But it doesn't.
Luckily, there is a workaround, even if it's a bit clumsy.
[Email your tech questions to answer@pcworld.com.]
But first, a quick review on creating a Google Earth placemark. In Earth, either click the yellow pushpin icon on the toolbar or select Add>Placemark from the menus. Another yellow pushpin and a dialog box will appear. Drag the pin to your desired point on the map, then enter a name in the dialog box.
Here's another way to do it: Search for an address or location. The name will appear below the Search field. Drag it to Places below the search result.
In order to sync your places, you'll need to save them in a .kmz file. To do so, select Add>Folder. Give the folder a name, such as Synced Places. Once you click OK, the folder will appear in the Places pane below Search. Drag all of your places and placemarks (or just the ones you want on the other PC) to the new folder. You'll have to drag them one at a time.
Now right-click the folder, and select Save Place As. Save it as a .kmz file (the default).
Where should you save it to? If you're using a cloud storage service like DropBox or iCloud, save it there, so it will end up in the cloud and be available on every PC and device you use.
If you're not using a cloud storage service, and don't want to use one, you can simply save it anywhere, then email the file to yourself.
Then, on your other computers, open Google Earth and select File>Open. Open the .kmz file.
Things can be trickier with a mobile device, especially an iPad and iPhone, since iOS lacks a general file system. The instructions below apply specifically to DropBox, but other cloud storage services will likely behave in a similar way.
Open the DropBox app on your device. Go to and tap your .kmz file. On an Android device, the file will load into Earth automatically. In iOS, Dropbox will give you an "Unable to view file" message. Tap the Open in icon in the upper-right corner, then tap Open in Google Earth.
When he isn't bicycling, prowling used bookstores, or watching movies, PC World Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector writes about technology and cinema.
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Friday, 30 August 2013
Android product head Hugo Barra to leave Google
It might be time to add Android's Hugo Barra to the growing list of departures from Google. Yesterday, AllThingsD reported that Barra, who currently serves at the vice president of product management for Android, is leaving to take on a new role at one of China's high-profile handset manufacturers, Xiaomi. Today, Barra confirmed the move.
Barra is the third executive to leave from the Android team, following Android co-founder Andy Rubin's sudden departure and Android engineer Jean-Baptise Queru. It's unclear what Barra's next role will be at Xiaomi, but it's likely he'll have a major hand in product development. Xiaomi produces high-end Android phones for the Chinese market.
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It'll be a difficult exit for Google, as Barra heads up all of Google's Android product development. A representative from Google told AllThingsD, "We wish Hugo Barra the best. We'll miss him at Google and we're excited that he is staying within the Android ecosystem."
Android is quickly becoming a ship without a captain. Now that all of the division's most prominent faces have departed, the future of Android is in flux. It remains to be seen how long Senior VP Sundar Pichai can continue to man both the Android and Chrome OS teams before he is forced to abandon one for the other or merge the two platforms.
With Google steadily unifying its services across operating systems, a merger between Chrome OS and Android seems, more than ever, unavoidable. And with Samsung eating up a majority of smartphone profits, while simultaneously trying to cut Google out of the picture as much as possible, it wouldn't be crazy to think that Android could be folded into Chrome.
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Former Google executive to help Xiaomi to expand outside China
Up-and-coming Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has hired Hugo Barra, former Google vice president for Android product management, to lead its expansion worldwide.
The hiring of Barra is a high-profile move for Xiaomi, a company that only began selling smartphones two years ago, but has since become one of the biggest names in China's tech industry.
Barra announced his departure from the U.S. search giant in a posting on his Google+ page.
"In a few weeks, I'll be joining the Xiaomi team in China to help them expand their incredible product portfolio and business globally -- as Vice President, Xiaomi Global," he wrote.
Xiaomi's CEO Lei Jun and President Lin Bin both confirmed that Barra would be joining the company in posts on Chinese Twitter-like site Sina Weibo on Thursday.
Xiaomi, which means "Little Rice" in English, has gained its popularity partly by selling high-end Android phones, but at low prices. For example, the company last month announced a phone built with a quad-core processor, 4.7-inch screen, and an 8-megapixel camera, for the low price of US$129 when bought without carrier subsidies.
At the same time, the company also uses a crowdsourcing model to encourage its customers to offer input on improving the user interface to its Android phones. This has helped the company generate word-of-mouth marketing and create loyalty among its customers, according to Xiaomi's CEO.
In this year's second quarter, shipments of Xiaomi phones surpassed Apple in China, making the company the sixth largest handset vendor in the nation, according to research firm Canalys.
Xiaomi's top management is already made up of Chinese employees who formerly worked at Google, Microsoft and Motorola, but the company's expertise has been geared toward the domestic market so far, said Teck Zhung Wong, an analyst with research firm IDC.
"Xiaomi knows the Chinese market, but when it comes to tackling the global market, I think this is where this person [Barra] will become useful," he said.
"It goes to show that Xiaomi's ambition is definitely not restricted to the Greater China market," Wong added. "It's definitely looking at ways to get into the overseas market, very likely mature markets, such as the U.S. and Europe."
The company's phones have started to sell outside of mainland China, in Hong Kong and Taiwan. But next year, Xiaomi could start expanding into five other foreign markets, its CEO said back in May.
Next week, Xiaomi is holding a major event in Beijing, where the company is expected to unveil its next flagship phone. Xiaomi has also been rumored to be developing a tablet.
Report: Android product head Hugo Barra to leave Google
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Tuesday, 27 August 2013
Google Glass to gain local apps, but not cellular connection
Google Glass will eventually gain the ability to run local apps from the device itself, Glass creator Babak Parviz told a conference audience on Monday.
Parviz, speaking at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, charted the evolution of Glass as packing more computer power into progressively small former factors, from mainframes to PCs to smartphones, and on to wearables.
Google has a “few thousand” of Glass devices available in the wild, through its Explorer program, Parviz said. The glasses use either a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection to pull in data, which is projected onto the surface of the clear plastic of the Glass lens. So far, Google Glass wearers can record video, take pictures, launch Hangouts, navigate, and search for information. However, Google continues to add new features to Glass via periodic updates; some recent additions include the ability to view YouTube videos, pausing playback while orienting a “cursor” over the appropriate button.
Third-party apps for Glass are also beginning to take shape, with The New York Times, among others, rolling out services for what Google hopes is a new platform, Parviz said. “We still have a lot of data centers, a lot of computers, a lot of smartphones, and a lot of notebooks,” he said. “So even though these new platforms appear, the previous platforms don’t totally disappear.”
For now, however, those services run in the cloud. In fact, everything runs in the cloud, Parviz said. “In the next generation of the platform, we may allow people to run things from here,” he said, gesturing to the Glass itself.
The problem, of course, is that adding anything to the Glass device—whether it be more storage, a faster processor, or other capabilities, may have implications on the device itself. The majority of power consumed by smartphones is due to both the display and the cellular radio; while Parviz did not explicitly connect the two, Glass lacks a cellular radio, and “there is no plan to put a cellular radio immediately in Glass right now,” Parviz said. The assumption, of course, is that doing so would pare down the Glass battery life.
A version of Glass for prescription lenses is also on the way, as Google executives have said before, “In the next few months we’ll integrate it into glasses,” Parviz said.
But don’t expect it to go much farther than that. Parviz said that his work at the University of Washington involved trying to project images onto the curved surface of a contact lens—a project that proved incredibly difficult for even a single pixel.
Numerous audience members asked Parviz about the societal elements of Glass, from its impact on security to just wondering whether they could avoid being recorded by Glass. Parviz slid by the question, noting that in the late 1880s the rise of portable cameras prompted concerns that anyone would take a picture of another person in a public place, something that is legal under U.S. law. “The user will have to have some judgement,” he said.
Google Glass for bespectacled coming in a 'few months'
A version of Google Glass for people who already wear glasses will arrive in a few months, the head of the Google project said Monday.
"In the next few months we will release a version that will integrate into glasses. So if you are wearing glasses, you'd be able to use this," said Babak Parviz, founder and head of the Google Glass project at Google, during a speech at the Hot Chips conference in Stanford, California, on Tuesday.
If the Google Glass platform is successful, "you'll see different optics," Parviz said.
But will there be Google Glass contact lenses? That is possible, but perhaps in the distant future, Parviz said. "In principle that's a doable thing, someday actually in the future contact lenses may arrive. It's not immediate."
As a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Parviz worked on putting displays in contact lenses.
"It was fun, we went all the way to 1-pixel on a contact lens that worked wirelessly, but even that was quite difficult," Parviz said.
In his speech, Parviz talked about the promise of Google Glass as a possible successor to smartphones for communications and information. It provides immediate and hands-free access to information, and can overlay the data on what may seem like a large screen.
"The cell phones screens... are limited for the most part to what the cell phone is. It would be very difficult to get a cinema-size display if you don't have a form factor like this," Parviz said.
Google ships its own smartphones and provides the OS for hundreds of millions of Android phones, but Glass has its own advantages. Smartphones, tablets and Google Glass will be able to co-exist, but ultimately the cutting-edge technology will take over, Parviz said. Google Glass could take over from smartphones the way mobile devices took over from computers and telephones as communications tools.
"It's not to say the smartphones aren't good, but there are certain things definitely unique to this platform that smartphones will not be able to do," Parviz said.
There are privacy concerns as well, and Parviz said it will take some time for society to figure out Google Glass. He likened the Google Glass to the first time the camera came out in the late 1800s, which caused an uproar because people were scared that someone would violate their privacy by randomly taking their picture on a street. Now cameras are part of our daily lives, Parviz said.
Google is trying to improve the hardware.
The company wants Google Glass to last all day on a single charge, while delivering the performance to handle the vast amount of information it collects. It also needs to interact better with the human body and environment through optics and photonics. Another challenge is video processing, as the device may capture a lot of video, and also be used for augmented reality.
"What we have today is a good solid first step, but not enough especially for video processing. Because the more this platform is successful, we're going to be collecting more video," Parviz said.
Another goal is to keep the device stylish, while reducing the size of components and keeping power consumption down.
"We're very excited about this platform," Parviz said. "We've made some really solid progress in the right direction and hopefully we can accelerate that."
Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com
Agam Shah is a reporter for the IDG News Service in New York. He covers hardware including PCs, servers, tablets, chips, semiconductors, consumer electronics and peripherals.
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Google blocks Chromecast app that streams local media files
You can stream a lot of content to a Chromecast dongle, but one thing you can’t do is stream your personal files from an Android device—and according to one developer, Google's actively working to keep it that way.
A beta version of an Android application called AllCast has lost the ability to stream content to Chromecast from Android apps such as the photo gallery, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
“Google's latest Chromecast update intentionally breaks AllCast,” said Android developer Koushik Dutta in a recent Google+ post. The company removed a developer option called “video_playback,” which as its name suggests, allowed any application to support video playback.
Dutta believes this is a sign that Google will not be friendly toward third-party developers of Chromecast apps compared to the relative openness Android developers enjoy on Google Play. “The Chromecast will probably not be indie developer friendly,” Dutta said in his post. “The Google TV team will likely only whitelist media companies.”
“We’re excited to bring more content to Chromecast and would like to support all types of apps, including those for local content,” Google said in a statement when we reached out to them for comment. “It’s still early days for the Google Cast SDK, which we just released in developer preview for early development and testing only. We expect that the SDK will continue to change before we launch out of developer preview, and want to provide a great experience for users and developers before making the SDK and additional apps more broadly available.”
Indeed, in its Chromecast developer documentation, Google says that all functionality is subject to change.
Regardless, Google certainly hasn’t made it easy for Chromecast users to stream their own video files to their TV—an obvious feature deficit. Competitors such as Apple TV already allow you to stream content from your PC or iOS device; however, Apple restricts video formats to h.264 and a specific type of MP4.
Many critics suspect that Google left out the ability to stream personal videos to make its new Web-meets-TV platform more attractive to movie and television studios concerned about piracy. Instead of buying approved content from Google Play or Amazon, the argument goes, users could just download a pirated copy of Sunday night’s Breaking Bad episode and send that to Chromecast.
If the speculation is accurate, it’s rather unfair to limit obvious functionality on Chromecast just to make sure Hollywood doesn’t get spooked, especially since Apple TV could broadcast pirated video to your TV right now. Plus, anyone with the technical know-how to download a pirated video (especially via torrents) likely figured out how to put that content on their TV long before Chromecast showed up.
If you’re absolutely dying to stream personal videos to your Chromecast, one workaround for now is to try casting from your PC. Our recent primer on seven Chromecast tips and tricks shows you how to easily access a PC’s file system from an open Chrome tab.
Updated at 11:23 a.m. PT with a comment from Google.
Ian is an independent writer based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His current focus is on all things tech including mobile devices, desktop and laptop computers, software, social networks, Web apps, tech-related legislation and corporate tech news.
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Google, Apple remove some restrictions on technology to Iran
Google has told Android developers that they can start offering free apps in Iran, while Apple has removed Iran from among the countries to which sales of its products are prohibited.
"Developers, starting today you can make your free apps available in Iran," Google said in a Google+ post on Monday.
The move appears to be linked to the U.S decision in May to lift sanctions on the export of a variety of consumer communications devices and software and services including mobile phones to Iran.
Exports of the devices to Iran had been blocked since the 1990s, but ahead of presidential elections in the June in the country, the U.S. decided that its new license would empower the Iranian people as the Iranian government intensifies its efforts to stifle their access to information.
The export of equipment to the Iranian government or to any individual or entity on a Specially Designated Nationals list, however, continued to be prohibited.( Technology covered under the new license were fee-based services, software and hardware required for personal communications over the Internet, including instant messaging, email, chat, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing and blogging.
The products, software and services now authorized for export to Iran also include mobile phones, personal digital assistants, satellite phones, computers, consumer network equipment, anti-tracking software, anti-censorship tools, virtual private networks, proxy tools and voice-over-IP and video chat tools.
Google said Monday that the new distribution option for developers is currently available only for free apps and not for priced apps or apps that use in-app billing. The new general license authorizes financial transactions related to the products it covers, said the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. The move by Google will give Iranians access to a number of important tools which activists use to protect themselves from surveillance, but developers have to still opt to make their apps available in Iran, it said.
Google's competitor Apple has also apparently removed Iran from its list of prohibited destinations for its products like the iPhone, iPad and Mac and associated software, citing the new general license in May. The list now includes Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Sudan. On an Apple support community, a user wanted to know how to contact Apple to set up a store in the country.
Both companies did not immediately comment.
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com
John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service.
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Three handy (but often-overlooked) Google Chrome features
We are all of us creatures of habit, and those habits can easily extend to our Web browsers, where we're so focused on our usual daily routines, we often overlook certain capabilities that can save us time or improve our productivity.
In Google Chrome, for example, there are three features so neatly tucked away that I suspect many users have never noticed them.
Luckily for you, I have:
Don't overlook these three options in Google Chrome. 1. Other devices
One of Chrome's most powerful capabilities is synchronization--not just your bookmarks and passwords, but also your open tabs. (You can enable this via Settings, Advanced sync settings.)
For example, if you have Chrome installed on, say, another PC, a smartphone, and a tablet, you can use your desktop browser to access the open tabs on all those devices.
To do, so simply open a new tab, then click the Other devices menu in the lower-right corner of that tab. You'll see a categorized list of open tabs from all other instances of your Chrome browser. Easy to overlook, but insanely handy.
2. Recently closed
As you may know, if you accidentally close a tab, you can immediately reopen it by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T. However, what if you need to recall a tab you closed a while back? Or a tab that wasn't the very last one you closed?
What you need is a list of closed tabs, which Chrome quietly provides: While you're down in that lower-right corner, look at the option right next to Other Devices: the Recently closed menu. Click it and you'll see links to your 10 most recently closed tabs.
3. Web Store
Newcomers to Chrome simply may not be aware that Google offers a fairly massive library of apps for the browser, and that it's accessible via the Chrome Web Store.
As you've no doubt spotted, the link resides in that same corner, right alongside Recently Closed. Click Web Store to open the app aisles in a new tab, then browse or search to your heart's content.
Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.
For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
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Saturday, 24 August 2013
Define awesome: Google beefs up dictionary in search
Google’s dictionary definitions are a handy way to make sure you’re using the right word in a pinch, but haven’t offered much else beyond proper spellings and definitions. Early Friday, Google elected to up its word game with an overhauled dictionary that goes beyond telling you what a word means.
The new definition function on Google Now Google’s dictionary definitions now include sample sentences to give you a sense of word usage, synonyms, and in some cases antonyms, and even an option to translate the word into another language. Two of the coolest additions include a timeline showing a word’s origins and how it has evolved over time. You can also find a separate graph charting the word’s usage popularity from 1800 to the present.
If you’ve never used Google’s word definitions, just type “define [word]” into Google’s search box and you’ll get a definition in no time, along with all the new goodies.
The new tools are also available on mobile. Anyone with a modern Android phone can fire up Google Now and say “define warhammer” to have the definition spoken back along with the new dictionary features displayed on screen. Other mobile users should be able to find the same feature through Google’s search app.
How much detail you get for each definition depends on the age of the word and how common it is. For example, Google provided numerous details for words such as attack, fortuitous, and preamble, but only definitions for searches such as ice hockey, warhammer, and football.You can also get Google to speak the definition to you on the desktop by using the search engine’s voice command feature on Google.com.
Some of the other features may also vary depending on the word. Word origins, for example, may not appear as a timeline. Instead, you might see a chart showing the origins of the word from other languages or simply get a listing of the origin and historical variations of the word clumped together in a paragraph.
Google didn’t specify whether the new feature was available to all users worldwide or not. But judging by the reaction to the new feature in the comments on Google+, this feature may only be available to U.S. English users for now.
You will no longer have an excuse for being indolent or slothful when it comes to word choice. If you do see the new feature, check it out. Google’s new dictionary definitions are a great addition for logophiles and anyone else who needs more information about a word beyond simply what it means.
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Ian is an independent writer based in Tel Aviv, Israel. His current focus is on all things tech including mobile devices, desktop and laptop computers, software, social networks, Web apps, tech-related legislation and corporate tech news.
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