Google’s educational Expeditions are expanding to augmented reality

Having already taken on VR with Google Cardboard, Google has announced that its Expeditions program is expanding to the world of augmented reality (AR). Announced on stage at Google I/O 2017, Expeditions AR will give teachers and students a new way to experience virtual field trips.

Using a Tango phone, students will be able to use expeditions AR to check out 3D models in the classroom. That opens up all kinds of possibilities for visualizing concepts and ideas that are hard to vocalize.

Expeditions VR has already been used by some 2 million students with Google Cardboard, opening up new ways to experience virtual locales and experiences around the world. AR opens up a whole new bag of worms, and it will be interesting to see what experiences come out of it.

Android O: Features, release date and everything you need to know

Following its initial announcements of updates to Photos, Home and Assistant, Google finally got around to Android O at its main I/O 2017 keynote. While there’s not a whole lot new visually in Android O, there’s plenty that will help improve it in very important ways. 

• How to watch Google I/O 2017 and what to expect from the Google developer conference

Google updates its mobile operating system every year, and although we’re still a few months away from the next version rolling out to our devices, Google has already pushed out the first beta version for the public, which follows just a few weeks after the initial Developer preview release.  

• How to get Android O on your phone right now

Here’s everything you need to know about Android O. 

What is Android O?

Android O is the next major update to the Android. It follows the release of Android Nougat from last summer. Android O will also likely be labelled Android 8.0. After all, Android Marshmallow got the numerical designation Android 6.0, and Android Nougat got Android 7.0-7.1. However, older versions of Android, such as Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and KitKat, were all labelled 4.x updates.

What will Android O be called?

Google usually names its major Android OS updates after tasty treats – and in alphabetical order. So far, the company has released Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, KitKat, Lollipop, Marshmallow, and Nougat. It’s safe to say that Google will release Android O in 2017 with a sweet treat-themed name that begins with the letter O.

@dcseifert ???? pic.twitter.com/u8nMzjTIO1

— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) February 20, 2017

Google’s Hiroshi Lockheimer tends to tease Android update names on Twitter, and most recently, he’s been suggesting Android Oreo is the likely candidate for Android O. He may be kidding, though, considering he also tweeted an image of Pocky with the caption #2018. He also teased the name “Nutella” for Android N a number of times, and was plain just trolling everyone. 

What does Android O feature?

Google has released the first beta of Android O. It’s now available to download for developers and early adopters. 

The key message from Google is that this update is all about “Fluid Experiences” and “Vitals”. That essentially means things overlap, and flow together better on screen, and that it’s far more efficient than Nougat.

Picture-in-picture 

The first Android N developer preview from last year had a picture-in-picture mode, like you’d see in Apple’s iPads, but it was for Android TV. 

Now, Google has announced this feature will be widely available in Google O for smartphones as a baked in feature. We know that picture-in-picture display – also known as PIP – is coming to phones and tablets, so you can continue watching a video while, for instance, answering a chat in another app.

Launching it is as simple as pressing the home button while a video is playing. The video then becomes a small window on the home screen and you can move it around the screen so that it’s not in the way of what you’re doing. Then continue doing whatever else you need to be doing. When you’re finished, swipe it away, off the screen. 

GOOGLE

Notification Dots

Google billed Notification Dots as “a new for app developers to indicate that there’s activity in their app”. On the surface, it looks similar to the app badges we’ve seen on the iPhone’s operating system for years. It’s essentially a little dot that appears on the app icons when there’s a notification.

To interact with it, you can long-press on the app icon and a pop-up bubble appears showing the notification, right above where the app icon is on the screen. That means – while you still can – you don’t have to drop down the notification shade from the top of the screen to see your alerts. 

And, thankfully, the dots disappear as soon as you dismiss the notifications from the drop-down shade. 

Autofill with Google

We use Autofill every day in the Chrome browser, and now Google is bringing a system-wide iteration to Android. If you’ve ever told Google Chrome to save details in browser, you’ll be able to use that information to automatically fill in fields in Android O. 

As an example, you can log in to the Twitter account on your phone using the suggested account name and password that Google remembered from your Chrome browsing. It will work for most applications, presuming you opt-in to the feature. 

Smart Text Selection

Smart Text Selection is another new feature that’s designed to make daily interactions with your phone less tedious. For instance, if an email contains the name of a restaurant or cafe with more than one word, you can double tap any of the words, and it’ll select the whole name. 

More importantly, it can detect entire addresses; so double tapping any part of an address will automatically select the entire thing. What’s more, when it is selected, the system knows it’s an address and offers you the option to navigate there using Maps, along with the usual cut, copy and format options. It’s the same for phone numbers or email addresses, automatically giving you the relevant functions for those. 

Google Play Protect

Google has decided with Android O that it wants to make its efforts to keep your phone secure more visible. With O, in the apps and games screen, a small card appears to let you know that it’s scanning all your apps to make sure they don’t contain anything harmful. 

OS Optimisations

With Android O, Google has done some serious work on the backend to improve speed. That means, booting up your phone will take far less time than it does currently. With the Pixel, Google claims it boots up more than twice as fast. It will also mean that apps load faster and smoother by default, without any work needed by the developers. 

Background limits

To improve the battery life of Android devices, Google plans to reduce the background activity of apps in Android O. Android can now limit how apps function in the background, thus improving a user’s battery life and the device’s interactive performance.

Keyboard navigation

Google added a “reliable, predictable model” for “arrow” and “tab” navigation that helps both developers and users, the company said.

Connectivity

Android O supports Bluetooth audio codecs like the LDAC codec. There’s also a new “Wi-Fi Aware”, which was previously known as Neighbor Awareness Networking. On supported devices, apps and nearby devices can communicate over Wi-Fi without an internet access point.

Support for wider colour gamuts

Android O will make it possible for app developers to take advantage of support for a wide-colour gamut displays. There’s a growing trend for improving displays by making them HDR compatible (both on Android TV, but also in smartphones and tablets). A large component of HDR is supporting wider colour gamuts, which goes hand-in-hand with this aspect of Android O. Google says it’s aimed at imaging apps, however, with support for profiles like AdobeRGB, Pro Photo RGB or DCI-P3 to get the most out of the display.

Are there any Android O rumours?

Thanks to Venture Beat and a few other reports, we know Google has been developing new “assistive features” for Android, and some of those features might make it to the final version of Android O that releases later this year. Here’s a look at what’s rumoured:

Copy Less

The first feature is called Copy Less, and it’s designed to “cut down on the annoyance of copying text from one app and pasting it in another”. It works like this: imagine you and a friend are having a conversation in a chat app and you open Yelp to find a restaurant. When you go back to your conversation and type “it’s at,” the address of the restaurant will appear. You can then add it to the text box.

The feature may end up in Google’s standard-issue Gboard virtual keyboard app or the Android OS itself. Google is also working on ways to enhance certain types of text in messaging apps. So, if someone sends you a message containing an address, Copy Less will allow Android (or maybe Android’s stock Message app) to recognise the text is an address, and tapping on it will open it up Google Maps.

Gesture triggers

Google has reportedly found a way to let people use finger gestures to trigger actions in Android. For instance, when you draw the letter C onscreen, Android will show a short list of recent contacts. Gesture triggers could get delayed or might not ever ship, VentureBeat said.

Can you try Android O beta?

The short answer is yes. If you have a compatible device, you can install the public beta. It’s as simple as enrolling your device in the public beta program and waiting for the OTA update to hit your phone. 

• How to get Android O on your phone right now

Google surprised everyone in 2016 by announcing a Developer Preview of Android Nougat in advance of Google I/O 2016. It didn’t roll out the final release to consumers until August 2016. Google had previously announced a new Android OS with new hardware, but that was no longer the case last year, as Android Nougat didn’t land for new hardware until Google released its own Pixel flagships in late 2016.

Just like last year, the Android O Developer Preview was announced ahead of Google I/O, which kicked off on 17 May, and true to form. Since then, the second preview and the first public beta have been released.

For developers, the preview includes an SDK with system images for testing on the Android Emulator, as well as Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Pixel, Pixel XL, and Pixel C devices. Developers building for wearables can now use an emulator for testing Android Wear 2.0 on Android O.

Google offers instructions on how to install the preview on its developer website. It said the developer is in “early days” and cautioned the early developer preview should only be downloaded by developers. Google said it will release updated developer previews in the coming months, and will be “doing a deep dive on all things Android at Google I/O in May,” Google wrote in a blog post.

When is Android O coming to my phone?

The final release of Android O should be available in late summer 2017 – prior to any new hardware releases from Google. At least, if the company follows the same strategy as 2016. Google phones and tablets are the first to get new operating system updates, and security updates are provided for three years following the device’s release.

In other words, Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P will be supported by Google until September 2017. That means they get Android O. Last year’s Pixel and Pixel XL are also on the list of  phones to be updated to Android O. If you have a recent flagship phone or tablet, you’ll likely see the update rolled out within the first few months of 2018.

In its marketing of the Moto G4 Plus, Motorola teased that it will receive both Android Nougat and Android O.

Google’s Play Console Dashboards help developers pinpoint problems with their apps

Google is helping developers get a better grip on problems with their apps thanks to new Play Console Dashboards. Launched on stage at Google I/O 2017, Play Console Dashboards essentially provide developers with the vital signs of their apps, helping to pinpoint problems with specific analytics.

Play Console Dashboards pinpoint six issues that cause battery drain, crashes, and slow UI, Google says. Those include ANR rate, crash rate, slow rendering, frozen frames, stuck wake locks, and excessive wakeups. The dashboards also report how many users are seeing each issue with each app version, making it easier to drill down into specific problems.

Also worth noting are new unified profiling tools in Android Studio that can visualize CPU and memory usage over time, drill down into threads and call stacks, and more on a unified timeline.

We’ll likely learn much more about these new tools as I/O wears on, but be sure to check out our list of the most important announcements from Google I/O 2017 for more.

Google Lens resurfaces questions about AI and human identity

Today at the company’s annual developer conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai uttered a phrase that will no doubt be repeated in corporate board rooms across the world for the foreseeable future: “AI first.” It wasn’t the first we’ve heard of the formerly “mobile first” company’s focus on artificial intelligence, but Google I/O 2017 marked the first time we saw many of the tools that will backup that new catchphrase.

“When we started working on search, we wanted to do it at scale,” CEO Sundar Pichai said at the conference’s opening-day keynote today. “That’s why we designed our data centers from the ground up and put a lot of effort into them. Now that we’re evolving for this machine-learning and AI world, we’re building what we think of as AI-first data centers.”

But it was a quick, innocent enough reference to the company’s image recognition software, preceding the announcement of Google Lens, that should raises some red flags. In trying to appeal to the family women and men in the audience, Pichai revealed that the platform could recognize and tag your “boy” as such when you snap a pic of him blowing out the candles on his birthday cake.

“Similar to speech, we’re seeing great improvements in computer vision. So when we look at a picture like this we are able to understand the attributes behind the picture. We realize it’s your boy, in a birthday party, there was cake and family involved and your boy was happy. So we can understand all of that better now.”

He went on to say that Google’s image recognition systems are now “even better than human.” The screen shot, showing what the image recognition system identified in the photo included a flurry of words including: people, children, child, family, arm, hand, joy, surprise, birthday, party, laughter, family, women, and, yes, “boy.”

What could possibly be wrong with your camera identifying and tagging your “boy” at this “birthday” and the “woman’s” “hands” holding him in front of his “cake”? Well, nothing, if that’s really who is in the photo and what is going on. But as Google and other tech giants have proven, AI isn’t always as enlightened as the people who created it, and gender identity isn’t always visually recognizable. Tagging an image of a boy as “boy” isn’t an issue, but what if that child is transgender, gender fluid or gender non-conforming? Gender identity, as we’ve come to learn, is a divisive issue and a very personal one.

How Google’s AI will account for those of us who don’t fit stereotypical gender norms, is still unclear, but here’s hoping it’s learned from past mistakes. Google is no stranger to the slippery slope of AI image recognition and the very complex subject of human identity. Back in 2015, the company’s photo app tagged and organized pictures of at least one developer’s photos of black friends as “gorillas.” The incident shed light on the limits of image recognition algorithms and the people that program them. Google followed with an apology in a widely published statement.

“We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we’re looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future.”

There’s a difference between labeling a black person as a gorilla and misgendering an individual, but both come with their own set of historical, political and societal problems.

In a look at the future of Google Photos on The Verge, Anil Sabharwal, the head of product, focused on the diversity of individual organizational habits saying:

“Suggestions, patterns, the people that are important in your life — how we bring those to you at the appropriate time,” Sabharwal says. “Everyone is different.”

Let’s just hope Google’s AI recognizes that.

For all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2017, follow along here.

Google is bringing machine learning to job searches

Google is making it easier to search for jobs by leveraging machine learning and AI.

Google is rolling out a new initiative called Google for Jobs that will make it easier for you to find relevant jobs in your area. When you type in a job search query, Google will start offering suggestions for openings at the top of search results. The company is partnering with LinkedIn, Facebook, Careerbuilder Monster, Glassdoor, and others, and will rely on its machine learning and AI expertise to deliver results that match what you’re looking for.

You’ll be able to filter jobs by location, title, date posted, category, wage levels, and more. There’s the option to sort between full-time and part-time positions, and Google will also show commute times for jobs posted in your area. You can easily apply for jobs with a single tap

Google rolled out a pilot program of the Clouds Jobs API for FedEx, Carrier, and Johnson & Johnson back in November, with the companies seeing an 18% increase in applications. The feature will be rolling out to users in the U.S. in the coming weeks, and will be making its way to other countries in the future.

Be sure to take a look at all the announcements from Google I/O.

First beta release of Android O is available!

First beta release of Android O is available today!

It was only mentioned in passing during the Google I/O keynote, but the Android O beta is live!

You can sign up for the beta here, which will be available on the following devices:

• Pixel C
• Pixel
• Pixel XL
• Nexus 5X
• Nexus 6P
• Nexus Player

We’ll have more details on Android O soon as we dive into the beta ourselves.

Click here to sign up for the Android O beta!

Daydream Standalone: Everything we know so far

Google is upgrading Daydream in a big way.

On stage at Google I/O today, VR VP Clay Bavor announced the next step in Daydream’s evolution. While using your phone to power a VR headset is convenient, and the experiences created there have been impressive, the next step will probably not be powered by your phone. Clay dubbed this evolution of Daydream “Standalone VR” and this is what we know about it so far!

Read more at VRHeads.com

Google Photos gets better at sharing, creates actual photo books

Google Photos is easily one of the best ways to store and organise your best camera shots in the cloud. It’s free, smart, and completely cross-platform. Today, the company announced updates coming to the service, which take the cloud photo storage product to a new level.

• How to watch Google I/O 2017 and what to expect from the Google developer conference

All the new features are centered around the idea of making sharing better, both within the app and in physical form. 

Coming soon on #GooglePhotos, we’re bringing more ways to share photos and hold onto the moments that matter most. #io17 pic.twitter.com/QcU9Y7spFf

— Google (@Google) May 17, 2017

The first feature, dubbed Suggested Sharing, can automatically detect people in your photos and then offers to share it them with the relevant people. You get a notification on your phone, or you can access the new sharing tab in the mobile Photos app to see the suggestions. 

When you send it to the recipient, they can then choose the images they want and Photos can detect photos in their library from the same event, and then offers them the chance to share them back. That means a shared album with photos from all the people that were there. 

Shared Libraries is the second feature, and is aimed at couples, families and close friends. With this, you can automatically share specific kinds of photo with specific people. For instance, you can set it to have all your photos of your children and/or partner, with your partner. 

With it set up, any time you take a photo of your kids, it appears in a library in your partner’s Photos app. They can even set them to appear right in their main photo library stream. 

google

Lastly, there’s Photo Books. Which is exactly what the name suggests. In the Photos app, you’ll be able select if you want a soft or hard cover Photo Book, choose a ton of photos from your collection, then Photos automatically picks out the best and lays them out in the book.

You can make adjustments, then place an order which arrives a few days later. Initially, Photo Books will be US only. 

These features are rolling out on Android and iOS as well as the web over the coming weeks. 

Standalone Daydream VR is now a reality, Qualcomm, HTC and Lenovo onboard

Daydream VR has so far been an experience that has run on your smartphone, but now it’s making the jump into a standalone headset. Google and Qualcomm have partnered on a standalone Daydream VR headset.

Building on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 platform, the companies have produced a reference device that will give you a VR experience with no need to slip a phone into the front and no need to plug it into a computer. We’re yet to see exactly what this headset looks like, but we suspect it will be close to the reference devices that Qualcomm has produced in the past.

Using technology from the Tango project, he new standalone headsets will come with WorldSense, a positional tracking system with no need for any external cameras. This is enabled by sensors on the outside of the device, aiming to help you feel like you’re actually in the virtual world.

Google has also announced that it is working with HTC and Lenovo on the first standalone Daydream VR devices. The former produced the Vive, the latter worked heavily on Tango, so should lead to some interesting results.

Today at @Google I/O @htcvive was announced as a partner in creating standalone #VR headsets for #Daydream https://t.co/P2q7pnUMB8 pic.twitter.com/hAAdXYMscE

— HTC VIVE (@htcvive) May 17, 2017

Standalone Daydream VR headsets are due to hit the shelves later in 2017.

• What is Google Daydream and what devices support it? Google’s Android VR platform explained

Android Go is Google’s latest attempt at optimising budget Android phones

Google has introduced a new type of Android.

It’s not like the Android OS you’d find on a high-end smartphone such as the Google Pixel. The important thing to realise here is that Android Go is basically a light version of Android O that’s meant for budget, entry-level phones with about 512MB to 1GB of memory (RAM). So, it’s designed for devices like the just-announced Moto C, which has a low-resolution 5-inch screen and 8GB of storage. 

Keep in mind Google is trying to get more Android devices into the hands of people in developing communities: “There are now more Android users in India than there are in the US,” said Sameer Samat, the VP of product management for Android and Google Play, while on stage at the Google I/O 2017 conference on Wednesday. “Every minute seven Brazilians come online for the first time.”

• Google Photos gets better at sharing, creates actual photo books
• Google Home can now make hands-free phone calls like Amazon Echo
• Google Home can now give you visual responses on phones and Chromecast

Low-end devices sometimes can’t handle heavy apps, but with Android Go, which is different from Google’s similar Android One initiative, a budget phone’s software will be optimised for low-performing processors, small amounts of memory, and minimal mobile data consumption. It’ll basically make apps lighter – and Google Play Store will serve up apps and games that work best on budget phones.

Android Go will come with a data management tool in the quick settings, so that device owners can easily see how much data they have left, and the Chrome browser will enable Android’s data-saver feature by default. YouTube Go will preview videos before loading a data-heavy video, and you’ll be able to select a lower-streaming quality and see how much data each option will eat up.

Google said the first Android Go will arrive in 2018. Check out Pocket-lint’s Google I/O guide to see what else Google has announced.