Google Archive

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2012: The Year of AR HUD Glasses

According to a New York Times report, Google could be releasing Android-powered heads-up-display glasses before the end of the year.  The glasses would stream real-time information to a screen on the glasses using augmented reality software, sensors, and a 3G or 4G data connection.

The rumored Google glasses would be priced about the same as a smartphone ($150 to $600), which indicates a mass market intent.  The navigation system requires “head tilting to scroll and click” while a low-resolution camera monitors the users environment.

For now, it seems the information sent to the glasses would incorporate Google services such as Google Latitude and Google Goggles, recreated as augmented reality.  Intended to be used only as needed, these futuristic HUD glasses might see more use than expected as they make information even more immediately available than your smartphone.

(Story and Image via Mashable)

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Stop YouTube from Tracking Your Watched Videos

Whether you realize it or not, if you’re signed into Google or YouTube, there’s a record of all videos you search for and watch.  This log could be cleared manually in the past, but now you can get more control over your video history – by turning off this tracking function completely.

The Video Manager on YouTube now offers new video privacy options, pointed out by the Ghacks blogClicking on “Pause search history will disable video search logging, while going to “History” and clicking “Pause viewing history” disables video view logging.

When you decide you again want to let everyone see the latest cat capers and future stars you’ve viewed, it’s as simple as switching back to “Resume Search History.”

(Image and Story via LifeHacker)

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Are the women of Pinterest slowly taking over the world?

While we’re not trying to generalize, we have noticed a striking pattern of women and girls’ excitement to “Pinterests” nail polish colors, hair braiding techniques, and really expensive dresses; our pin boards are often times crowded with images of chopped fruit for salsas and recipes for vegan chicken, and examining this phenomenon even further, Techland is wondering: are men from Google+ and women from Pinterest?

Tech sites have been revealing “[m]ore than 97% of social photo-sharing site Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women. While plenty of the site’s 10.4 million registered users are men, its key demographic is women between the ages 18 and 34,” which is an overwhelmingly female-dominated statistic for an entire website.

Now while these gender statistics are shocking, consider the fact nearly 2/3 of Google+ members are men (there’s also Gentlement for those anti-pinners—“one of the more manly websites on the planet”), and software engineers make up the number 2 demographic of the + network, just behind the number one user statistic of college students).

Businesses are starting to utilize the “visually dazzling bulletin board,” and even the Facebook King himself Mark Zuckerberg supposedly created a Pinterest account (though it might also be fake); his pin board is showing an extreme liking for different iPhone homescreen snapshots.

As the site continues to grow (it already entered the top ten social networks, getting 11 million hits per week), we hope to see more guys jump on the Pinterest train, because we think the site is well on its way to taking over the Internet sharing world…

(via Techland)

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Google officially acquires Motorola Mobility after European Commission approves

When Larry Page proposed buying Motorola Mobility back in August, he noted the acquisition’s sensibility:

“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystems for the benefit of consumers, partners, and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

And now after making it through a series of needed approvals, the two companies have finally been given the thumbs up by the European Commission to proceed with the $12.5 billion acquisition, according to Reuters.

Shortly after the European Commission approved, the United States Department of Justice has also given the OK, whose statements were similar to those of the EC.

Joaquin Almuna, in charge of competition policy at the EC, spoke in Paris on Friday and said warned over abuse of “essential” patents in smartphone wars, and that he is “determined to use antitrust enforcement to prevent the misuse of patent rights to the detriment of a vigorous and accessible market. [He has] initiated investigations on the issue in several sectors,” and he plans to “keep a close eye on the behavior of all market players in the sector[.]”

Google still has to get the approval from China, which is said to be the “biggest hurdle” of all the because of the legal battles with Apple, but if all goes as planned, we can plan on seeing more of Google Android software on Motorola devices.

(via Engadget & NPR; photo via AnsBlog)

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Google home entertainment system in the works?

Of course! Google wouldn’t be complete without their own home entertainment system—as they seem to have succeeded every other sub industry out there.

They’ve been working on the project for a while; last May Google announced their Android@Home project framework, getting people excited that they wanted us to think of “every appliance in your home” as a potential phone accessory, too.

People have already begun running a free trial of the Android@Home—approximately 252 homes in various locations such as LA, Mountain View, and New York— and the feedback has been minimal so far, but does hint at a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi station.

“Google is developing an entertainment device that requires testing outside the laboratory environment. The device is in the prototyping phase and will be modified prior to final compliance testing….Users will connect their device to home Wi-Fi networks and use Bluetooth to connect to other home electronics equipment. [...] From this testing we hope to modify the design in order to maximize product robustness and user experience.”

Much like the technologies revealed at CES, the “home base” technologies seem to be making more of an appearance—having the idea of home and mobile interconnected. Google’s Android@Home will live up to that, controlling home theatre systems, switches, and appliances (though we don’t think it could possibly compare to Samsung’s Smart Appliances; they had customizable laundry load and ‘SpeedSpray technology washers).

(via Slashgear & Android@Home)

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Alas, Chrome for Android is here!

Well, for those of you with Android Ice Cream Sandwich that is.

Last year when rumors were surfacing about a possible Chrome app, well, let’s just say it was a given that two of Google’s biggest projects would eventually converge into what is said to be the best browser out there.

“Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices,” Google wrote in a blog announcement today.

Over at the Verge they filmed a demo of the phone, showing the beta’s feature highlights, of a “faster, simpler way” to use the Internet on your Android device. They mentioned the first thing you are required to do before installing is synch Chrome to your Google account—which will automatically transfer your bookmarks, etc.

Google’s likening the Chrome for Android experience as, “holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window on the Web [,] [and] [y]ou can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger [.]”

While the app remains in beta form, glitches are expected; don’t be surprised if you run into minor issues along the way. A polished version is said to come in the next month, as well as Chrome being set as Android’s default browser.

The question remaining is: will there be a forthcoming Chrome app for iOS?

(via PC Magazine & The Verge; photo via Phandroid)

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Google’s “Solve for X” will launch to the public soon

If you’ve ever sat through an intense math class like trig, or even a simpler math-based subject like algebra, sometimes the numbers plugged in to that painful-looking formula don’t necessarily constitute X. And this is a very frustrating thing, especially if you weren’t graciously born with the “math-side” of the brain.

Well, the same could be said for solving our world’s hardest problems: sometimes we don’t have the resources to get “X”; sometimes the proposed technologies that would need require something that is “out there,” where costs outweigh the reality of it happening.

But Google’s latest project “Solve for X” based in their “X Labs,” was created to “solve X” so to speak, so we can “get big stuff done.” Basically, the X Labs will be a “place where the curious to go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon to give us all hope that these ideas could really be brought to life.”

And much like Microsoft’s aim at filling the opportunity divide by funding worldwide projects that have the same goals of solving global problems at large, Google wants to enable these ideas, bringing the once seeming “impossible solutions” to a possible reality.

The public launch of Solve for X has not been officially determined, but on the site you can sign up for an e-mail notification of when we can start hypothesizing this “moonshot” thinking.

(via The Verge & Panda Daily)

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You get ‘em Europe: EU converges to raise speculation on Google’s privacy regulations

Something is happening here—as Google “took over” in a sense, other tech industry giants are stepping in and saying: wait, no… You can’t just take over the entire Internet for your profit’s sake; since when does obtaining information make us subject to some sort of privacy waiver that says Google can use our information? Consider Microsoft’s “Putting people first” campaign.

This morning Reuters reported that a group of European Union regulators wrote Google, stating: “Given the wide range of services you offer, and the popularity of these services, changes in your privacy policy may affect citizens in most of or all of the EU member states [.] [...] We wish to check the possible consequences for the protection of personal data of these citizens in a coordinated way [.] [...] In light of the above, we can for a pause in the interests of insuring there can be no misunderstanding about Google’s commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis.”

The letter from the EU demonstrates the slight monopolization that Google is trying to slyly pull with their “wide range of privacy settings.”And if 27 countries are coming together to point out issues, well, that says something.

Meanwhile, Google is acting “surprised” in light of the situation. Pablo Chavez wrote on his blog that, “[Google] is explaining [their] privacy commitments to users of those products in 85% fewer words,” and “[they] want to make users’ experience seamless and easy by allowing more sharing of information among products when users are signed into their Google Accounts.”

Will America step up as well, or is Google and the US synonymously attached at the hip? Or is there even much to be concerned about regarding Google’s new privacy changes?

(via The Verge & The Next Web; photo via Smart Grids)

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Google’s Bouncer Scans Apps for Malware

Famous (or infamous) for its lack of a pre-approval process, the Android Market now features a little more protection for customers.  ‘Bouncer’ is a new Google service that scans apps for suspicious behaviors and known malware.  Existing apps as well as new apps will be analyzed by the scanner through this behind-the-scenes screening without affecting Android users.

In the months that Google has been testing Bouncer, the company has seen a “40 percent decline in the number of downloads of potentially malicious apps.”  It could also be used to help Google flag fraud-related apps.  As positive as a completely open app store approach sounds, it’s hard to argue that protecting customers from these kinds of malicious apps isn’t a good thing.  You can read Google’s full Bouncer announcement in the Google Mobile Blog.

(Via CNET, Image via Engadget)

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Microsoft calls out Google over concerns through campaign

So we’ve referenced the continuous evolving of what used to seem like a “futuristic” world in the movie Minority Report, how we are becoming way more in sync than we ever have before with the two worlds of personal and public—but not in the traditional means of the two: as times progresses and technology advances, we are becoming our stuff—“stuff” we like to do is always trailing along with us on the Internet, resonating in Google’s database for marketers to have a field day— and most of us barely even know it yet.

And what happens when a huge, almost vitally necessary company that our world pretty much depends on for information, takes over our lives in a sense?

Well, two things: we could passively undergo what seems like a marketing/ Google takeover, or companies can rebel, and make aware that these changes are not OK; tapping into our every Internet move is not a legitimate way to force more advertising upon us (it has been averaged that people see up to 5,000 different advertisements in a day, probably even more depending on your demographic).

“To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve the quality of an advertising product. But, that effort needs to be balanced with continuing to meet the needs and  interests of users. Every business finds its own balance and attracts users who share those priorities. Google’s new changes have upset that balance, with users’ priorities being de-prioritized. That’s why people are concerned and looking for alternatives,” Google writes in the ad campaign.

Which is right. Where do we draw the line? Why are our lives always subject to an advertisement?

As more campaigns like this appear, and we approach the March 1 deadline of when Google will start this takeover, we shall see if the giant can win its right to track our web browsing habits.

(sources: The Verge & Marketing Land; photo via Microsoft’s ad campaign)