Amazon Echo may be number one, but Google Home is quickly catching up

Amazon Echo is certainly dominating the market, but that’s because there hasn’t been much competition until now.

Amazon’s line of assistant-enabled Echo devices remain as the punchline of every connected home joke, which is why it’s no surprise it’s the number one line of assistant-enabled connected speaker in U.S. households. According to research firm eMarketer, the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot devices now claim roughy 70% of the marketshare for this particular category of devices.

Google Home ranks in at number two, but it’s trailing far behind at nearly 24% marketshare. Still, that’s not bad for a device that’s only been on the market for about 6 months. The remaining portion of the marketshare goes to smaller players, including Lenovo, LG, Harmon Kardon, and Mattel.

eMarketer said that it expects the broader category of virtual assistants to grow by 23% this year, though it’s worth noting that the statistics featured here focused on speakers with a built-in digital assistant and do not include usage data from Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana.

Reuters reports that Google Home’s share is also expected to grow. Tests by analysts have shown that the technology running Google’s connected devices is seen as a match or “superior to competitors”. Additionally, a survey done by RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney found Google’s brand awareness in the U.S. to be about 80% of Alexa’s, despite it being a relatively nascent release.

Google Home

• Google Home review
• These services work with Google Home
• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo
• Join our Google Home forums!

Google Store Best Buy Target

Chrome for Android makes it easier to download a web page and read it offline

Saving a local copy of a web article just got better in Chrome for Android.

Did you know you can long press on a link in Chrome for Android and you have the option to save it so you can read it offline? If you said no, it’s probably because it was one of those features nobody mentions and is mostly hidden. Google is changing that in the newest version of Chrome for Android.

Last year, we introduced the ability to download any webpage, so you can view the whole page completely offline. More than 45 million web pages are downloaded every week—and today we’re adding improvements to make it even easier to download pages.

You’ll now have a better dialog box when you long press any link, and the simpler design means you’ll notice that you can download it to your phone’s storage. If you enter the URL or click a bookmark to it while you’re offline, you’ll see the saved version instead of the dinosaur page that tells you that you’re offline, and if you try to load a page while offline, that same dinosaur page now has a button that will automatically download the page the next time you get connected to the internet.

The biggest change is how saved pages are displayed. When you open a new page or tab, you’ll see everything you’ve saved with a new offline badge. A quick tap opens the saved page in Chrome with a link to refresh with the online copy at the bottom.

We have an active connection to the internet on our phones most of the time, but for those times you don’t — like on the train or an airplane — you can read all the great things you’ve saved in Chrome.

Get ready to ‘spray’ touch controls onto any surface

Nowadays we’re accustomed to the slick glass touchscreens on our phones and tablets, but what if we could extend such luxury to other parts of our devices — or to any surface, for that matter — in a cheap and cheerful way? Well, apparently there’s a solution on the way. At the ACM CHI conference this week, Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group showed off its latest research project, dubbed Electrick, which enables low-cost touch sensing on pretty much any object with a conductive surface — either it’s made out of a conductive material (including plastics mixed with conductive particles) or has a conductive coating (such as a carbon conductive spray paint) applied over it. Better yet, this technique works on irregular surfaces as well.

The sensing principle behind this is based on electric field tomography. Basically, the surface is surrounded by a number of electrodes (say, 8 to 16 of them, depending on the surface size), with one adjacent pair of electrodes injecting a small current to the surface, and the voltage at other pairs are measured. This cycle is repeated by rotating the pair of current-emitting electrodes. When a finger is placed on the surface, some current is shunted and thus reducing the localized voltages during each cycle, and by combining these cross-sectional measurements from all cycles, the finger’s 2D position can then be located. Electrick also supports multi-touch, though given the lower sensing resolution, it’s understandably not as robust as conventional touchscreens when the fingers are too close to each other.

Given how easy it is to apply Electrick onto any object and surface, this opens up all sorts of opportunities to both modders and manufacturers, and Future Interfaces Group showed off many cool ideas here. One of my favorites is the electric guitar demo: it’s sprayed with carbon conductive paint with electrodes attached along the edges, and after dragging the custom controls — a tremolo arm and a filter button, in this case — into the desired places using the companion app, the player can immediately use those features by touching the corresponding spots on the actual guitar. Similar functionalities can be applied to Play-doh, Jell-O and 3D-printed objects made out of conductive filaments.

Another interesting use case involved vacuum-forming Velostat (a carbon-loaded polyolefin film by 3M) onto the back cover of a smartphone, and with the electrodes attached, this enables the phone to detect different grips and thus toggle the corresponding apps. For instance, holding the phone horizontally by the ends of its top and bottom edges would trigger the camera app, and holding the phone vertically with both thumbs ready to type would trigger the keyboard.

Even car owners may benefit from this technology. In another demo, Future Interfaces Group sprayed carbon paint onto an ordinary steering wheel, and then attached electrodes to its outer edge. This effectively turned the steering wheel into a giant gesture input device for potential dashboard applications, and it could also serve as a hand detection feature to ensure safe driving.

Electrick isn’t limited to small objects; it can also work on large surfaces like desks and even walls. One demo added gesture input functionality to anywhere on a wall for controlling a light fixture: tap to turn it on or off, and drag up or down to adjust its brightness. And in case you’re wondering, the conductive carbon paint works under the protective latex wall paint. As for the desk demo, you can assign specific touch-sensitive spots for launching apps or toggling functions on your computer.

As simple as the technology behind Electrick sounds, it’ll still be at least a year away from commercialization, according to Future Interfaces Group director Chris Harrison (who also happens to be the co-founder and CTO of Qeexo, a UX startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon). That said, once the performance and noise filtering have been optimized, it’ll simply be a matter of packaging up the circuitry as a single chip or even applying it in software form.

Source: Chris Harrison (PDF)

Apple wants to sell iPhones out of an historic DC library

Apple is no stranger to the challenges of opening stores in historic locations, such as New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. Its latest shop may be its most ambitious yet, however. The company has unveiled plans to convert Washington, DC’s Carnegie Library into a retail store. The building hasn’t been used as a book repository for a long time (it’s currently shared between the city’s Historical Society and the organizers at Events DC), but this would still be a vast undertaking. In the proposal, Apple would turn most of the Library into one of its shining beacons of modernity while (hopefully) respecting its 114-year legacy.

The tech giant is promising to restore the building to its early glory, and would purposefully avoid slapping its logos all over the circa-1903 architecture. Inside, however, you wouldn’t mistake this for a vintage design. While the Historical Society would still have offices on the second floor, Apple would use its community-oriented store concept, complete with a tree-lined Genius Grove and a central skylight. You’d visit for concerts and art exhibitions in addition to shopping for your next iPhone. It wouldn’t be a textbook example of crass commercialism, but nor would it be a museum for Washington’s heritage.

Whether or not Apple gets to move forward is still up in the air. It’s presenting its plans to the area’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission on the evening of May 8th, and neither they nor other organizations will necessarily greenlight the concept. Overseers could easily shoot Apple down if they feel its conversion would go too far, or if they believe that the space needs a higher purpose than selling electronics. Still, Apple has had success with these proposals in the past — and it certainly has a strong incentive to try when Carnegie Library is at a literal crossroads in the very heart of the American capital.

Via: AppleInsider

Source: Washington Post

‘Sonic Riders’ may have been (legally) plagiarized

Sonic the Hedgehog is known for two things: going fast and his love of chili dogs. While the blue blur is returning to the fray in a pair of new games (made independently of each other, no less) this year, the ever-vigilant folks at Unseen64 have uncovered an entry from the expedient rodent’s past we’ll never get to play. It was a skateboarding game called Sonic Extreme that used the groundwork of a Nickelodeon-skinned version of a game featuring Tech Deck finger-skateboard toys and was set to release on Gamecube, PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox. And you thought your family tree was complicated.

In Extreme, you’d skate hoverboard around various courses including one inspired by “Green Hill Zone,” collect rings and face down members of the Sonic clan. According to Unseen64’s source, the prototype that the development team at Vision Scape used to pitch the project only took about a week to make. That’s thanks to the recycled bits and pieces the studio assembled from its past work.

Compared to some of the other places Sonic has regrettably appeared, Extreme looks like it could’ve actually been a lot of fun. There was even a battle mode that offered what looks an awful lot like Mario Kart 8’s, with players taking each other out by collecting power-ups and weapons scattered about an arena.

Sega was apparently really into the idea, requesting a budget and design document for the game, but as history shows, nothing ever came to fruition. Well, until 2006’s eerily similar-in-concept Sonic Riders released some two years after Vision Scape’s pitch. Welp. Without comment from Sega, it’s tough to know the exact reasoning behind why Vision Scape’s prototype was seemingly cloned. Considering part of the paperwork Vision Scape signed, because Extreme used one of Sega’s own intellectual properties there apparently wasn’t any legal recourse the studio could take against Sega.

But, hey, at least if you want to see what it’s like controlling Sonic while he’s strapped to a hoverboard, all that’ll take is a trip to eBay versus tracking down an Xbox software development kit like the one where this footage came from.

Via: Polygon

Source: DidYouKnowGaming?

Burger Clan and the weird history of awkward video game promos

Executives at Burger King are convinced playing video games makes people really, really hungry. Like, debilitatingly hungry. So hungry, in fact, that they can’t take a few minutes to grab a snack, order a pizza or even look away from the screen.

Thankfully for starved players in Madrid, Spain, Burger King and Sony have rolled out a solution to this dining dilemma: Burger Clan.

Burger Clan allows PlayStation Network members in Spain to jump into a game with an eSports professional — folks like FIFA champion Alfonso Ramos Cuevas or Call of Duty player Roberto Abreu — and between rounds of owning n00bs, they can order Burger King for home delivery directly from these pros. Think of it as a drive-thru system for the living room. Spain has one of the largest home-delivery ecosystems in the world and it represents Burger King’s third-biggest market, behind the United States and Germany. If Burger Clan is going to work anywhere, it’s in Madrid.

That’s a big if, according to eSports attorney Bryce Blum.

“The campaign feels like many of the other marquee brands that have tried to enter the gaming space — it’s forced and doesn’t engage with the audience in an authentic manner,” Blum says. “I feel like Burger King simply saw the opportunity and went for it without trying to understand its audience and what drives their behavior.”

I wish I was in the room when this idea was pitched – they really figured out how to get us e-gamers. Sign me up for the BurgerClan. https://t.co/a4G1mPr1nS

— Bryce Blum (@esportslaw) May 1, 2017

To Blum, it seems like Burger King concocted this promotion based on outdated, out-of-touch stereotypes about video game fans: They’re lazy, obsessive and addicted to fast food. Burger King Spain marketing director Bianca Shen Leme responded to this potential authenticity problem in April, in an interview with Adweek.

“There’s a need, and the need is, ‘I don’t want to stop playing,’” Leme says. “That’s why I think it’s authentic; people recognize it’s made for them, adapted to their lifestyle. They want to play as much as they can.”

This stance doesn’t exactly assuage Blum’s fears.

To be fair, Burger Clan isn’t alone in the world of silly, slightly exploitative cross-market video game advertising programs. Taco Bell is probably the most prolific video game partner in the fast food world, regularly giving away special PlayStation 4s, Vitas, free games, Overwatch swag and even a PlayStation VR bundle.

Though Taco Bell might win in terms of volume, its promotions are downright tame compared with other blatantly awkward attempts to tap into the gaming audience. Here are just a few memorable campaigns:

• 1990: Capcom and Domino’s create the game Yo! Noid by replacing the protagonist of a Japanese NES platformer with the pizza chain’s mascot.
• 2005: Everquest 2 implements an in-game Pizza Hut ordering system.
• 2008: Microsoft and Doritos convince an independent developer to make the game Doritos Dash of Destruction for the Xbox 360.
• 2012: Doritos, Mountain Dew and Halo 4 join forces in a branded interview that spawns the Doritosgate controversy.
• 2013: Axe body spray teams up with DICE to create a disturbingly unromantic ad featuring Battlefield 4.
• 2015: Professional League of Legends player Hai Lam inexplicably ends up in a bed with five young women in an ad for HTC.
• 2016: Ugh, Hydrobot. We’ll let Blum handle this one: “It’s the perfect encapsulation of trying to reach the gaming audience through antiquated and offensive stereotypes.”
• 2016: Twitch debuts the Totino’s Bucking Couch, where prominent streamers sit on a mechanical-bull-style loveseat as crewmembers throw pizza rolls at their faces.
• 2017: After 10 years of development, Final Fantasy XV finally debuts, complete with a bunch of obvious in-game ads for Cup Noodle.

And, now, there’s Burger Clan. Clearly, partnerships in the video game world are nothing new — especially for fast food companies — but Burger Clan is slightly different. It’s attempting to cash in on the eSports market, one of the gaming industry’s fastest-growing segments.

Blum commends Burger King for focusing on eSports and meeting players where they are. According to Blum, 55 percent of eSports fans are between the ages of 21 and 35, with an average household income of $76,000 — they’re young, they have cash to burn and there’s only going to be more of them. This is advertising’s sweet spot. Professional-gaming fans are arguably more attractive to advertisers than the general, ageing video game audience. In 2017, the average gaming fan is 35 years old.

“In a world where younger generations no longer consume traditional media and have off-the-charts ad-block rates, eSports and gaming present a unique opportunity to reach this valuable demographic in a compelling manner,” Blum says.

Burger Clan is silly, but it’s also innovative. The entire thing could, in fact, work out magnificently. Perhaps Burger King and Sony are laying the foundation for the future of fast food. Perhaps they’ll simply sell a few extra Whoppers in Madrid this month.

Regardless, the video game industry doesn’t need help coming up with unfortunate advertising campaigns. Recent history is filled with examples of ill-conceived marketing schemes: The makers of Hitman briefly allowed anyone to pretend to kill their friends for having “small tits;” an Australian media outlet called the bomb squad after Ubisoft sent a ticking safe to its offices in a Watch Dogs 2 stunt; Capcom opened a butcher shop purporting to sell human meat for Resident Evil 6; Ubisoft hired an actor to burst into a New Zealand bar waving a plastic gun, scaring patrons and prompting the police to appear, all to sell Splinter Cell: Conviction. The list goes on.

Corporate promotions are a special brand of ridiculous, though — they’re generally an attempt by an outside brand to appeal to as many video game fans as possible, which makes most campaigns feel out of touch or exploitative to the very audience they’re trying to reach.

Some brands get it right. Arby’s, for example, recently showed other fast food companies how to rule social media through the use of clever pop culture references. The company’s Twitter account is filled with adorable animations of popular video game characters, all crafted out of burger boxes. It’s subtle, it’s thoughtful and it’s working.

“At the CS:GO Major in Atlanta this past January, there were actually ‘Let’s go Arby’s’ chants during some of the timeouts because the eSports community feels like Arby’s embraced gaming in an authentic and fun way,” Blum says.

Let the battles begin pic.twitter.com/3aYSp574Ng

— Arby’s (@Arbys) April 28, 2017

As the eSports market explodes, outside companies will continue to create slightly insulting and tacky ad campaigns aimed at its fans. Sometimes, these ads will work. And sometimes, they’ll flop. Spectacularly.

“ESports and gaming activations are incredibly high-risk, high-reward,” Blum says. “If you’re successful, you can get millions of free social engagements with a single ad. … On the flip side, if you run a bad campaign you can get burned incredibly quickly.”

Google makes it easier to read offline in Chrome on Android

While apps like Pocket and Instapaper can help you read web pages on the go without a network connection, Google’s Chrome browser added the ability right into its Android app last December. Today, the company has tweaked the feature to make it a bit easier to download pages for offline viewing.

You can do a long press on any link in Chrome to find a new option to “Download link.” You’ll even get this option when you tap and hold on any article suggestion on a new tab page. Further, when you get Chrome’s dinosaur image for any offline page, you’ll see a “Download Page Later” button that will automatically grab the page for you when you’re back online. Any articles you’ve downloaded will show up in your recent downloads list with a new offline badge — just open a new tab to see it.

Now, whether you are actually offline or just want to save web pages for when you are, Chrome has your back. You’ll need the latest version of Chrome (58) for Android to do it, though.

Source: Google

Uber expands self-driving research to Canada amid US troubles

Uber has just opened up a new office in Toronto, Canada dedicated to autonomous driving. This is the first Advanced Technologies Group operations to open outside of the US, though the main ATG hub is still in Pittsburgh, PA, where it started self-driving tests late last year. That said, Uber’s relationship with Pittsburgh officials have soured in the past few months so it’s possible the company could be trying to diversify operations just in case the Pittsburgh deal doesn’t work out.

The situation in Toronto seems to be better, at least for now. Heading the group is Raquel Urtasun, a University of Toronto professor and Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. Uber has already committed to supporting the Vector Institute, an AI research organization founded by Urtasun, for the next few years. CEO Travis Kalanick described the support as a way to contribute towards Toronto’s transportation tech.

As for Pittsburgh, well, the Uber situation there hasn’t been good lately. Not only have self-driving Ubers run into issues like the occasional fender-bender or going down the wrong way of a one-way street, local officials have accused the company for not contributing much to the city’s wellbeing. For example, Pittsburgh requested $25 million for a new transit connection between Carnegie Mellon and an autonomous vehicle test site. Uber apparently not only refused but also came back with a list of requests like wanting access to bus lanes, which Mayor Bill Peduto was not inclined to give. Peduto was also a harsh critic of the company when Uber drivers broke the NYC taxi strike following the first immigration ban.

What’s more, Uber’s self-driving division has been under increased scrutiny following the Waymo lawsuit. Anthony Levandowski recently left his role as the head of ATG and is also no longer working on anything LiDAR-related. As a reminder, Levandowski was accused of stealing trade secrets from Waymo during his tenure there. He was also accused of colluding with Uber, creating a fake company, which was then acquired by Uber in order to acquire said secrets.

When asked about any concerns she might have about Uber given the Waymo lawsuit, Urtasun told Techcrunch that she wouldn’t be working on anything LiDAR-related and she wouldn’t have joined if she had reservations.

Via: Techcrunch

Source: Uber

Apple offers free Smart Keyboard repairs for up to three years

It’s been about a year and a half since Apple’s iPad Pro hit the market, which means the laptop-ditching early adopters have had plenty of time to mash the keys and put Apple’s Smart Keyboard through some rigorous paces. Unfortunately for some users, however, those keyboards have started experiencing some “functional issues” like sticking or unresponsive keys and shoddy connections that make it difficult to actually get some work done. According to an internal memo circulated to Apple Stores and service providers last week, the company plans to address these issues by offering free repairs on any Smart Keyboard within three years of the purchase date.

As 9to5Mac reports, the extended repair program covers both the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch Smart Keyboard models and applies to issues like: stuck, repeating or unresponsive keys, as well as sensor problems and issues with the magnetic connector. The devices were all covered by Apple’s 12-month limited warranty at launch, so the new program essentially offers an extra two years of coverage for the keyboards — although it doesn’t cover the tablets themselves. If you’ve already shelled out for a replacement keyboard that would have been covered under the new program, Apple will also issue you a refund. On the other hand, if you’ve been struggling to type out your debut novel on Apple’s pro-level, $150-plus typing surface, you should probably get yourself to the Genius Grove.

Source: 9to5Mac

Google’s mysterious Fuchsia OS looks like an Android re-do

When we last looked at Google’s Fuchsia operating system, it was very modest. While it was designed for everything from Internet of Things devices to PCs, there wasn’t even a graphical interface to show. Well, things have… evolved. Ars Technica has revisited Fuchsia several months later, and it now touts an interface (nicknamed Armadillo) that makes it clear this isn’t just some after-hours experiment. It’s only a set of placeholders at the moment, but it gives you a good idea as to what to expect.

The home screen is a large, vertically scrolling list of cards for “stories,” or collections of apps and OS components that work together to complete a given task. There’s also a Google Now-style section that has “suggestion” cards for tasks — use them and you’ll either add to an existing story or create a new one. The prototype UI also includes a simple split-screen interface, and scales up to tablet size.

Fuchsia isn’t based on Linux, like Android or Chrome OS, but it still uses open source code that would let anyone tinker with the inner workings. Apps, meanwhile, are built using Google’s Flutter kit, which lets developers write both Android and iOS apps.

Things are clearly coming along. But there’s one overriding question: just what role will Fuchsia have? Google’s Travis Geiselbrecht stresses that this “isn’t a toy thing,” but there’s no public strategy. Ars speculates that Google is treating this as a sort of Android re-do: what if the company could design a platform while dumping all the technology it no longer needs or wants, such as Linux or any traces of Java? The use of Flutter would let you run Android apps until there’s broader software support. It might take years before Fuchsia is ready for public use, assuming that’s the ultimate plan, but there could be a day where Android is no longer the center of Google’s computing universe.

Source: Ars Technica