Google makes it easier to get Internet of Things devices online
It’s relatively easy to build your own Internet of Things hardware, but the software is another story. How do you connect it to cloud services, push updates or just write code? Google might help. It’s trotting out a developer preview of Android Things, a toolbox that theoretically makes connecting IoT devices as straightforward as writing an Android app. Think of it as a more mature, more accessible Project Brillo. You’re not only using ordinary Android developer tools (Android Studio and the official SDK), but tapping into Google Play Services and Google Cloud Platform. In theory, most of the heavy lifting is done for you — future versions in the months ahead will even grab regular updates (both from you and Google) and use Google’s ad hoc Weave networking.
This is ostensibly designed for companies building custom hardware, but you don’t need pro engineering skills to get started. Android Things already works with Intel’s Edison, Raspberry Pi 3 and NXP’s Pico, so you can whip up a Google-powered gadget with minimal effort.
Appropriately, Google is improving Weave itself. There’s a new device developer kit for certain kids of hardware (lights, switches and thermostats right now), and Weave devices can hook into services like Google Assistant. And it’s only going to get more ambitious: in addition to more device developer kit support, Google will both offer tools to help write mobile apps and merge its own take on Weave with Nest’s version. Between this and the Android Things release, it’s evident that Google doesn’t want to sit on the sidelines while Microsoft and others make their own IoT platforms. It wants Android at the heart of many of your connected devices, and that means removing as many hurdles as possible.
Source: Google Blog
Chevy delivers its first Bolt EVs in Tesla’s backyard
The high-range, reasonably priced Bolt EV is finally here. Introduced at CES 2016, the car’s delivery to a dealership in Fremont, California is the completion of an aggressive roadmap for the automobile set forth by GM CEO Mary Barra when the vehicle was unveiled. And it’s probably not a coincidence that the cars will be transferred to their new owners approximately three miles from the Tesla assembly plant.
The electric Bolt has a range of 238 miles and comes in at $37,495 before US tax credits. That puts it in the same class as the Tesla Model 3 that won’t start being delivered until around the end of 2017. With potentially a year separating the two vehicles, GM has a huge jump start on reasonably priced, high-milage EV market. And dropping those first cars off near Tesla doesn’t seem like a coincidence.
While getting the Bolt EV into the hands of actual customers a year from its unveiling is impressive, it’s important to note that only three cars are being delivered today. But, Chevy says that additional vehicles are currently in transit to California and Oregon and will arrive before the end of the month. Mid-Atlantic states will see the car in showrooms this winter after the beginning of new year with the rest of the United States getting it before before the middle of 2017.
‘Drive!Drive!Drive!’ is the most fun you can have on 16 wheels
I’m not sure when I fell out of love with driving games. Sure, I’ll still play Mario Kart multiplayer when the occasion calls for it, but somewhere between the various Gran Turismo, Forza and Need for Speed titles I got bored. Drive!Drive!Drive!, which arrived on Steam and the PlayStation Store this morning, got me interested again.
Drive!Drive!Drive! is… different. You’re not just in command of one vehicle in a single race. No, you’re in charge of two, three or sometimes even four cars, each racing on their own track against AI opponents.
In the bottom-right of the screen, you see all of the tracks currently in play (they typically overlap), together with the current position of each of your cars. When you’re not actively controlling a car, the AI takes over, and it is awful, by design. Your job is to switch cars, and get them all across the finish line.
The AI being useless is a great mechanic. You can leave a car way ahead in first place, and within five seconds it’s driven off the edge of a track and is dead-last. That means you have to always be switching, juggling your various cars to ensure that all of them end up in a respectable position. You can either switch between cars using the d-pad, or enter a kind of pause mode to choose a particular track to race on, which is helpful when things get really hectic.
The driving part of Drive!Drive!Drive! is well executed: You race across various sky-bound neon tracks controlling various cars that handle in various ways. You can drift, you can boost; it handles somewhat like a Burnout game, in so much as you’re rewarded for aggression, for shunting, crashing and otherwise incapacitating your rivals. It all feels fun, if a little pedestrian. But that’s all it had to be given the extra mechanic of car switching.
I first played Drive!Drive!Drive! back in September at a game show, and have been looking forward to its release ever since. The main campaign is filled with plenty of variety, and there’s a robust level creation tool that should give plenty of longevity to proceedings. Today, it launches on Steam (for both Windows and Mac) and PlayStation 4, and for $19.99 (£15.99), it’s a safe bet for some fun times.
Source: Drive!Drive!Drive!
Google spins out its self-driving car division
Google isn’t wasting much time validating rumors that it’s shaking up its self-driving car efforts. The internet giant is spinning out its self-driving project as a new company, Waymo, with current division head (and Hyundai veteran) John Krafcik as its CEO. It’ll still have access to the resources of Google’s parent company Alphabet, but it’ll act more as a “venture backed startup,” Krafcik said in a press conference. Appropriately, there’s much more talk of turning autonomous vehicle tech into a practical business.
Waymo sees its technology applying to numerous areas, including ridesharing, trucking and personally-owned cars. It could also be licensed out to car manufacturers, Krafcik adds. Also, there’s an emphasis on real-world improvements, such as a more comfortable (that is, less jarring) experience for passengers and support for driving in heavy rain and other harsh road conditions.
The move isn’t exactly a shock — there have been rumors of Google spinning out its self-driving division for roughly a year. Still, it’s an important step. It’s an acknowledgment that driverless tech has matured to the point where building a sustainable business around it isn’t just fantasy. Also, it’s no secret that Alphabet wants to see a better return on investment from its many experiments. The creation of Waymo should light a fire under the self-driving team, giving it a stronger incentive to make money and show that its research has tangible benefits.
Source: TechCrunch, Business Insider
Someone Google Translated ‘Final Fantasy’
As much as we love them, Japanese role-playing games can be baffling at the best of times. Yet thanks to some clever localization, teams of writers and translators around the globe have managed to make sense of these intriguing adventures. But what if these localization teams didn’t exist? That’s the question translation enthusiast Clyde Mandelin asked, resulting in him rigging up a program to Google Translate Final Fantasy IV.
Calling the project Funky Fantasy IV, his software extracts all the game’s original Japanese text and replaces it with a straight Google translation – with predictably hilarious results.
In a time where many gamers are demanding literal translations of Japanese games, this project really highlights the great work that localization teams do. More importantly, it’s also really, really amusing. Funky Fantasy IV is still in the testing stage and will be made available once its bugs have been ironed out. In the mean time, all your Funky Fantasies are belong to Clyde.
Source: Legends of Localization
Snapchat Gains Shazam Integration, Group Chats, and Sticker Creation
Snapchat has gained Shazam’s music recognizing abilities in its camera screen, which Shazam says is an even easier way to discover new songs and send each one to friends as Snaps. To use the new feature, all users have to do is press and hold anywhere on the Snapchat camera screen when music is playing nearby to begin the Shazam process. From there they can dig deeper into more info about the song and artists thanks to a new Shazam card, and send the recommendation to friends.
Today, Snapchat also announced a new group chat feature that the company says is meant to help family members stay in touch over the holidays. Up to 16 people can join in on the group message, and each one will be deleted after 24 hours, just like Snapchat’s normal Stories section. Names of every participant are listed at the bottom of the window, so users can also tap one and jump into a one-on-one chat at any time.
Groups can be created while sending a Snap, or when you’re making a new Chat. When your friends are present in a Group Chat, we show their name at the bottom of the Chat. Simply tap their name to start a 1:1 Chat, and then easily return to the Group in one swipe! We call this Quick Chat, and it’s the fastest way to keep the conversation going with one friend without spamming the entire Group.
Two new “Creative Tools” will allow Snapchatters to create stickers from their own Snaps, using Scissors on the Preview Screen to cut a section of a picture out and turning it into a reusable sticker. A new Paintbrush tool will be available in the Memories section of the app and Snapchat says it “turns a Snap into an artistic masterpiece.”
The update is available now for the iOS Snapchat app. [Direct Link]
Tags: Shazam, Snapchat
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AirPods Launch in Stores Next Week as Online Delivery Estimates Quickly Lengthening
Apple has announced AirPods will be available for purchase at Apple Stores, authorized resellers, and select carriers next week, providing customers who did not quickly pre-order with a chance to buy the wireless earphones before the end of the year. Apple said stores will receive “regular AirPods shipments.”
AirPods launched on Apple’s website earlier today for $159. The all-new wireless earphones had an initial delivery estimate of around December 21 for many customers in the United States, but that date quickly slipped, and Apple is now quoting “4 weeks” for orders yet to be placed on its U.S. storefront.
AirPods are also estimated to ship in 4 weeks in Canada, where they are priced at $219. In Australia ($229) and the United Kingdom (£159), customers can still get earlier December 19 delivery as of the time this article was published. In Singapore, customers can get AirPods delivered by December 22 for $238.
In the Eurozone, AirPods cost €179. In Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, customers face a two-week wait for AirPods. Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Japan also have 2-week estimates. In Hong Kong, it is 4 weeks. AirPods are available in more than 100 countries overall.
Tags: AirPods, Apple retail
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Apple Releases macOS Sierra 10.12.2 With New Emoji, Fixes for Graphics Issue and SIP Bug
Apple today released macOS Sierra 10.12.2, the second update to the macOS Sierra operating system that launched on September 20. macOS Sierra 10.12.2 comes two months after the release of macOS Sierra 10.12.1, and has been in testing since October 31.
macOS Sierra 10.12.2 is a free update for all customers who are running macOS Sierra. The update can be downloaded using the Software Update function in the Mac App Store.
macOS Sierra 10.12.2 includes new emoji, introducing dozens of Unicode 9 characters like selfie, face palm, owl, shark, avocado, pancakes, bacon, and more, plus there are new profession emoji available in both make and female genders.
Apple has also updated the artwork on many existing emoji to make them look more realistic, and new color explosion wallpapers — from the iPhone marketing materials — have been introduced.
Along with these outward-facing changes, the 10.12.2 update includes several important bug fixes. A serious graphics issue that has been affecting some new MacBook Pro owners has been solved, and a bug that caused System Integrity Protection to be disabled, also impacting the new MacBook Pro, has been fixed. A full list of bug fixes and improvements is below:
– Improves setup and reliability of Auto Unlock
– Allows addition of a Chinese Trackpad Handwriting button to the Touch Bar Control Strip
– Adds support for taking screenshots of the Touch Bar using the Grab app or Cmd-Shift-6 shortcut
– Fixes an issue that caused the Touch Bar emoji picker to appear on the display
– Resolves graphics issues on MacBook Pro (October 2016) computers
– Fixes an issue where System Integrity Protection was disabled on some MacBook Pro (October 2016) computers
– Improves setup and opt-out experience for iCloud Desktop and Documents
– Fixes an issue with the delivery of Optimized Storage alerts
– Improves audio quality when using Siri and FaceTime with Bluetooth headphones
– Improves the stability of Photos when creating and ordering books
– Fixes an issue where incoming Mail messages did not appear when using a Microsoft Exchange account
– Fixes an issue that prevented installation of Safari Extensions downloaded outside the Safari Extensions Gallery
– Adds support for new installations of Windows 8 and Windows 7 using Boot Camp on supported Macs
macOS Sierra is the latest Mac operating system. It includes Siri support, Apple Pay for the web, Universal Clipboard, Apple Watch auto unlocking, improved iCloud Drive integration, Picture-in-Picture multitasking, and dozens of smaller features that can be found in our macOS Sierra roundup.
Related Roundup: macOS Sierra
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Google acquires ex-Googler wearables startup Cronologics to improve Android Wear
What goes around comes around.
In a quiet announcement this week, Cronologics, a small wearables startup based out of Silicon Valley, said that it has been acquired by Google to help improve Android Wear.
Cronologics, which formed in 2014, is made up of former Google employees who set out on their own during the height of wearable excitement and smartwatch growth, hoping to build a cross-platform OS that, like Pebble and its new owner Fitbit, could live between worlds, so to speak. The company launched a crowdfunding campaign earlier this year for the CoWatch, an Alexa-powered touchscreen smartwatch powered by its proprietary Cronologics OS.
“Today, we’re excited to announce the next phase of our journey — we are joining Google to help grow the portfolio of watches powered by Android Wear. We see strong alignment with Android Wear’s mission and look forward to working with our new colleagues at Google to continue pushing the frontier of wearable technology and smartwatches with Android Wear 2.0 and beyond,” the company said in a statement on its landing page. It’s unclear whether the CoWatch will continue being offered — it shipped shortly after the Indigegogo campaign finished in June — but it’s unlikely we’ll see much of Cronologics OS going forward.
Instead, the team hopes to help Google improve Android Wear, the latest version of which is expected to launch in early 2017 alongside some new hardware.
The difference between Oculus Touch, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR controllers
Are all VR motion controllers the same?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a PlayStation VR owner, an Oculus Rift Day One backer, or exploring the universe in an HTC Vive, there are now controllers for each that allow you to reach out with your real arms and interact with the virtual world.
But are all of these controllers equal? Does it really matter if you’re using the aging PlayStation Move controllers instead of the futuristic Oculus Touch? If an app was built with Vive controllers in mind, is the experience identical everywhere? Is there such a thing as a “best” motion controller? Let’s take a look!
Read more at VR Heads!
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