Google OnHub gets a home automation boost with IFTTT integration

If you own one of Google’s OnHub routers, you’ll now be able to leverage If This, Then That (IFTTT) to program some cool automated tasks. After updating to the latest firmware, you’ll be able to take advantage of IFTTT’s recipes to craft all manner of automated tasks that are triggered by devices connecting to or disconnecting from the OnHub router.

Options for recipes are only really limited to your imagination, but you’ll be able to trigger interactions with a number of devices that connect to the router, including phones, speakers, lights and Nest. For example, you could set up a recipe to automatically turn on the lights when you walk through the door and your phone connects to OnHub. To help give you a head start, the OnHub team put together the video above to show off just some of the possibilities.

If you have an OnHub, you can get started with setting up interactions by heading to the OnHub channel on IFTTT.

Samsung Gear VR users have watched over 2 million hours of virtual reality content

It turns out we’re wearing these virtual reality headsets a lot.

Samsung is putting plenty of weight behind virtual reality, and is building a full-stack solution from 360-degree video capture to the associated software to a headset that can view it all. And as it turns out, the system is working.

Speaking at SDC 2016 in San Francisco, Samsung’s John Pleasants, executive VP of Media Solutions, dropped a pretty crazy metric on us: Gear VR owners have already watched over two million hours of virtual reality content to date. To put that into perspective, that’s over 228 years of time spent in the Gear VR experience.

That’s quite an achievement considering the Gear VR was very limited in availability and relevance in its first versions, only really pushing out to the average consumer with the newest version that retails for just $99 and is built to work with the Galaxy S7.

Every single attendee at SDC 2016 this year will be going home with a Gear 360 spherical camera as well, so the amount of content available for Gear VR users is only going to increase.

Samsung Gear VR

• Gear VR review
• Five Gear VR games that shouldn’t be missed
• Inside Samsung’s Gear VR web browser
• Gear VR vs. Google Cardboard
• Where to buy Gear VR

Amazon
AT&T
Best Buy
Samsung

Machine learning, AI, post-mobile search lead 2016 Google Founders’ Letter

Alphabet CEO gives Google’s chief a huge megaphone, as he lays the current and future vision of both companies.

The Founders Letter is a powerful statement for Google. Start with the original “Don’t be evil” mission of 2004, to last year’s opus that formed Alphabet and marked a major restructuring of Google. Today, in a 2016 Founders’ Letter, Alphabet CEO Larry Page hands the virtual pen to Google CEO Sundar Pichai for an update.

“I wanted to give him most of the bully-pulpit here to reflect on Google’s accomplishments and share his vision,” Page writes, noting that we’ll see him, Pichai and Sergey Brin share that space in the future.

Search remains key to everything, Pichai writes. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change.

It’s easy to take Search for granted after so many years, but it’s amazing to think just how far it has come and still has to go. I still remember the days when 10 bare blue links on a desktop page helped you navigate to different parts of the Internet. Contrast that to today, where the majority of our searches come from mobile, and an increasing number of them via voice. These queries get harder and harder with each passing year—people want more local, more context-specific information, and they want it at their fingertips.

Having a stockpile of results is just part of the equation, though. To truly make them useful, you have to be able to work with them. That’s where things like machine learning and artificial intelligence will play a big role in the future. (And make no mistake, that future is now.) And the line between your mobile device and a desktop computer — and anything and everything else that’s connected — will continue to blur.

A key driver behind all of this work has been our long-term investment in machine learning and AI. It’s what allows you to use your voice to search for information, to translate the web from one language to another, to filter the spam from your inbox, to search for “hugs” in your photos and actually pull up pictures of people hugging … to solve many of the problems we encounter in daily life. It’s what has allowed us to build products that get better over time, making them increasingly useful and helpful.

He also mentioned Google’s efforts to add more and faster ways to access content, such as launching Accelerated Mobile Pages for faster mobile news sites and YouTube Red, its ad-free version of its video service with original content.

Pichai wrote about how Android now has 1.4 billion active devices, but that it is working to change how we access content via AI assistants:

Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the “device” to fade away. Over time, the computer itself—whatever its form factor—will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world.

Pichai says that Google will continue to create services that will help others worldwide:

For us, technology is not about the devices or the products we build. Those aren’t the end-goals. Technology is a democratizing force, empowering people through information. Google is an information company. It was when it was founded, and it is today. And it’s what people do with that information that amazes and inspires me every day.

Read: This year’s founders’ letter

Fiat Chrysler reportedly in talks to partner with Google’s self-driving car group

Google’s self-driving car division may be getting some extra backing from established auto industry player Fiat Chrysler. According to a new report, the two firms are already in late-stage talks to collaborate on the tech giant’s self-driving car efforts.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

The talks have been ongoing for several months, this person said. Alphabet has been seeking industry partnerships with the biggest auto makers in the world, offering a deal to sell self-driving car technology that has been under development for several years.

The story adds that Fiat Chrysler’s CEO Sergio Marchionne has reportedly been looking for partners to help offset costs for some time, and that the car company could even team up with a tech business like Google.

A few months ago, rumors hit that Google and Ford were in talks to form a joint venture to build self-driving cars, but that alliance was never announced.

Motorola is holding an event in May, possibly for Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus

Lenovo-owned Motorola has sent invites to the media for an event in India, where the company is expected to unveil two new smartphones.

The event will be held in New Delhi on 17 May, and it will likely be for the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus smartphones. They are a follow-up to the third-generation Moto G, which was announced in July 2015. The Moto G4 is rumored to feature a 5.5-inch display with a 1080p resolution and an octa-core processor such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 or 435.

It’s also thought to pack 2GB of RAM and a 13 megapixel rear camera. As for the G4 Plus model, it is expected to feature a 16 megapixel rear camera. Leaked photographs and renders have suggested both phones will sport metal frames, and the G4 Plus might even come with a fingerprint scanner. Other than that, details are scarce at the moment.

We expect to hear more however in a few weeks. The company’s invite doesn’t provide too many clues, as it just shows a man pointing to the date 17 May along with the tagline: “You wouldn’t want to miss this!”

ICYMI: Deaf translation gloves, mind-controlled UAVs and more

Today on In Case You Missed It: Two college students from the University of Washington won an invention prize at a MIT competition for their SignAloud gloves, which translate the words deaf or mute people sign into spoken words. University of Florida held a drone race with mind-control headsets as the controllers. And China’s National University of Defense Technology made a robot that can tase people.

If you too know about (and marvel at) the all-girl, pop metal band BabyMetal, check out the Super Mario Maker version. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Google Play warns you when apps contain ads

Google rolled out a new labelling scheme to its Play store on Thursday that prominently indicates that an app contains advertisements of any kind. It’s the same sort of warning label you see for apps that contain in-game purchases and applies to every category in the store. Presumably, the neophyte Podcast section will be exempt from the new labelling rules.

This program grew out of Google’s “Designed for Families” initiative last year. In November, the company informed developers that they’d need to state whether their apps contained ads through their Play Developer Console by the start of January. Failure to comply with the request or lying about ad content reportedly was grounds for delisting.

Source: Venture Beat

Fiat Chrysler Open to Working With Apple as VW Seeks Other Partners

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is in the late stage of talks with Google parent company Alphabet Inc. about an industry partnership involving self-driving car technology, according to automotive blog Autoextremist and The Wall Street Journal.

Moreover, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has reportedly indicated that he is open to working with a tech giant, including Alphabet or Apple, in order to build more scale and help offset automotive-related production and development costs.

On the contrary, Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller said that its ongoing discussions with potential partners to start new digital mobility businesses do not involve Apple or Alphabet, as reported by Reuters.

The negotiations follow multiple reports that claim Apple is actively researching and developing an electric vehicle that could enter mass production by 2019 at the earliest. The so-called “Apple Car” team, known as “Project Titan” internally, is believed to include hundreds of employees that previously worked at Ford, General Motors, Land Rover, Tesla Motors, Texas Instruments, and elsewhere.

Apple also reportedly failed to reach manufacturing partnerships with Daimler and BMW.

Related Roundup: Apple Car
Tags: Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler
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