Google I/O 2017: All the announcements that matter

Google I/O 2017 is done and dusted.

Google holds an annual developers conference in order to get its developer community up to speed with all the updates it plans to push out to its products. Doing so gives developers a chance to get all their apps, services, integrations, and tie-ins ready before the updates actually roll out. However, consumers love to tune in as well, so Google usually makes a few announcements to get everyonel excited.

So, what does Google have in store for us all in 2017 and beyond? Here’s everything you need to know about Google I/O this year, including all the announcements made and how you can re-watch the main keynote in case you missed the original airing.

When is Google I/O 2017?

Google I/O 2017 will take place between 17 May and 19 May 2017 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA. Of course, to most of us, it’s the opening keynote that is the most interesting. The company uses this to show off all the developments we’ll get on our devices later in the year. This year’s keynote happened on 17 May at 10 am PT (6pm British Summer Time).

Where is the Google I/O 2017 livestream?

You can re-watch the keynote right here!

Google’s I/O webpage has also been updated with the conference’s agenda and announcement updates.

What happened at Google I/O 2017?

Here are all the announcements that matter:

Pocket-lint

Android O

• How to get Android O on your phone right now
• What is Android Go and why does it matter?
• Android Go is Google’s latest attempt at optimising budget Android phones

Google released the first developer preview of Android O in March, but now, it’s released the official preview of Android O, along with its new Android Go, a version of the operating system meant to power low-end devices in emerging markets. During the keynote, we got demos of picture-in-picture, Notification Dots, smart copy-and-paste, and other features designed to improve speed, security, and battery.

Google Home

• Google Home can now make hands-free phone calls like Amazon Echo
• Google Home can now give you visual responses on phones and Chromecast

Google Home, which is Google’s Amazon Echo-like smart speaker loaded with Google Assistant, has been updated with a bunch of new features. It now will have “proactive assistance”, also known as push notifications, as well as hands-free free calling (outgoing only, at launch), Spotify, SoundCloud, and Deezer integration, and Bluetooth support. It can even launch HBO Now.

Another new feature is Visual Responses. It sends information to a display devices, including directions to your phone, or a calendar to your TV via Chromecast. This feature also enables you to interact with streaming services without having to talk to your TV. Also, because Google Home recognises your voice, it will pick and display the right info for you, if you have multiple users set up.

Google

Google Assistant

• Move over, Siri: Google Assistant is officially coming to iPhone
• Google Lens brings super powers to your phone camera

Google’s competitor to Alexa is only a year older but is growing more useful every day. For instance, it added support for Whirlpool and GE appliances. Assistant is even now available on iOS as a standalone app. Google also released a developer’s kit, meaning it will soon come to more devices. The kit includes Actions, too, allow developers to deliver the ability to perform transactions from request to receipt.

Google Assistant has also been improved by Google’s machine learning progress, the company said. Now you can type into Assistant on your phone and it will communicate with you about what you show it through Google Lens’ eye (the camera), including translations.

google

Google Photos

• Google Photos gets better at sharing, creates actual photo books
• Google Lens brings super powers to your phone camera

Google has added Suggested Sharing to its Google Photos service. It nudges you to share and recommends who to share with, plus it includes a feed of shared images. There are now Shared Libraries, too, which auto-saves photos from a group of people. You can then put those photos into Photo Books – a soft or hard cover book you can order. It’s comprised entirely of photos from your collection.

A new Google Lens feature is being integrated into Photos as well. It will help identify places and serve up information about them. In the Photos app, after you’ve taken photo, Google Lens can identify buildings, get directions and opening hours for them, or it can bring up information on a famous work of art. Or, if a friend screenshots contact details of a business, you can tap it and call it right then.

Pocket-lint

VR and AR

• Google Daydream: What does it do and what devices support it?
• Standalone Daydream VR is now a reality, HTC and Lenovo onboard
• Google Daydream: Google’s Android VR platform explained

One year after introducing its Daydream View platform, Google has announced new phone partners and an unnamed Daydream-compatible headset that doesn’t need a phone. It’s a standalone wireless VR headset with built-in positional tracking. We’ll learn more about these devices later this year. Google also discussed its visual positioning service, which uses Project Tango to locate yourself indoors.

Is that it?

There were several other announcements, including that the ability to stream live and prerecorded YouTube 360 videos will be coming soon to the YouTube app on smart TVs. Google further said Gmail will get a smart reply feature that’s been available in Inbox. It launched a Google.ai division for learning systems, research tools, and applied AI. Then there’s Google Jobs, its platform that makes it easier to find jobs.

Google opens up its ‘instant’ apps to all developers

This time last year, Google unveiled “instant apps” — think of them as chunks of an application that can be run without downloading anything from the Play Store. For months after the announcement, Google only let certain partners build those bite-sized apps, but no longer. With the public launch of an SDK here at Google I/O, any developer can whip up an instant app of their own, and that’s good news for everyone involved.

Google Play product manager Ellie Powers said there are 50 instant apps in the wild already, and that the companies behind them have seen notable lifts in sales and engagement. That’s the business argument sorted, but instant apps are great news for average users, too.

Flagship smartphones come with more and more storage every year, but untold numbers of devices are still stuck with small memory allotments. For the people with more limited devices, the ability to access an app’s most crucial functions without eating up more space than needed could be a game-changer. And beyond that, downloading and installing apps takes time. With instant apps, however, all users would have to do is click a link; the applet would quickly load and let them do what they came for.

In a way, instant apps blur the line between web apps and native ones; you’d ideally get the speed of the former with the functionality of the latter. Sadly, creating instant apps isn’t nearly as fast as using them, so it’ll still be a while before they become the norm.

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

Twitter gives you more control over how it uses your data

Ever seen Twitter ads that were a little too relevant to your personal tastes? You now have better tools for dealing with them. Twitter has expanded both the control you have over your data inside its mobile apps as well as the amount of insight into how the social network uses that data. Venture into a “personalization and data” section in the settings and you can tell Twitter to not only avoid tailoring ads, but to stop customizing content based on location. You can even tell it to stop syncing personalization between devices, and there’s a master switch if you want to turn everything off at the same time.

And if you want transparency as to how that data is used, you’ll have it in spades. Twitter’s apps now show fine-grained demographic, interest and ad targeting data, with the option to edit that info if you’re concerned.

There’s a reason for all this extra privacy control: Twitter has updated its privacy policies, and it’s not all for the better. The company has updated how it shares anonymized and device-level data, some of it through “select partnership agreements.” It’s also expanding how it uses and holds on to data from third-party websites that integrate Twitter material. It’s all in the name of further personalizing services, Twitter says. It won’t store web visit data if you live in a country that’s part of the European Union or European Free Trade Association, but this might raise eyebrows regardless of where you live. You might want to review your personalization settings to make sure you’re completely comfortable.

Source: Twitter

Facebook battles clickbait on a post-by-post basis

Facebook has been steadily refining its attempts to fight clickbait articles over the years, and now it’s getting very, very specific. It’s updating its News Feed processing methods to account for clickbait on a post-by-post level, not just domains and Facebook pages. This should “more precisely” downplay the number of misleading stories cluttering your timeline, the social network says. Moreover, it’s promising a more exacting approach when it looks at individual headlines.

Until now, Facebook examined clickbait titles in a holistic way: it looked for both the exaggerated language (“you have to see this!”) and deliberate attempts to withhold info (“eat this every day”). Now, it’s considering those factors separately. The split promises a more effective approach to culling clickbait — in theory, shady writers are more likely to face punishment if they commit just one of the offenses.

Facebook doesn’t believe that most pages will see “significant changes” to the availability of their posts. If all goes well, this should only affect those publishers that count on clickbait to pump up their views. It probably won’t make a night-and-day difference in your News Feed, but don’t be surprised if you see more substantive links going forward.

Source: Facebook Newsroom

Nintendo’s ‘Arms’ has all the depth the ‘Wii Sports’ games lacked

For many, the Switch represents the Nintendo’s return to form. It’s the console that sheds both the name and the gimmicky motion controls that defined the Wii era of gaming. With traditional games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe leading the way, motion controls seem to be all but a thing of the past. Or they did, until Nintendo announced Arms — a gesture-based boxing game for the Switch that seems to lean heavily on Wii Sports’ legacy. It seems like a bizarre step backward, but don’t worry: It turns out that Arms isn’t repeating the mistakes of the Wii; it’s showing how Nintendo has learned from them.

In fact, distancing Arms from Wii Sports Boxing seemed to be the entire point of the game’s spring preview event. The company is proud of the game’s motion controls but stresses that it’s different from the simple waggle mechanic that defined the Wii’s minigame showcase. In Arms, the boxers’ telescopic limbs can be guided throughout the entire motion of a punch, allowing players to steer an attack as they extend toward the enemy. This means that to be effective, players need to follow through with their attacks, like in real life. It also allows the punches you throw to change direction halfway through their animation — creating a more nuanced experience than Wii Sports boxing ever could have offered.

Even so, Nintendo is finding the association with the Wii’s motion controls hard to shake. “I see this a lot,” Nintendo Product Marketing Manager JC Rodrigo told Engadget, mimicking the short wrist-flick motions that defined Wii Sports Boxing. “When it comes to flailing and kind of doing this, your arms take time to leave your body and travel across. If your opponent’s moving, and you just flick and don’t do anything, your hand will just go wherever.” It’s most players’ first guess at how to play the game, but Rodrigo says it’s a tactic that doesn’t work. “You will lose. Fast.”

There’s a lot more to the game than punching too. Players will need to learn specific gestures to block attacks and execute grabs and will have to master the art of controlling their character’s movement by leaning the Joy-Con controllers in just the right direction. It sounds complicated, but after weeks of testing each control scheme, Rodrigo said he’s found it to be the most versatile way to play. Even so, it’s not the only way to play. “There are button controls,” he said. “So there are controls for all different types.”

The core of the game is based around one-on-one arm-extending combat, but today Nintendo announced a few additional game modes. All of them play off of the game’s boxing mechanics in a slightly different way. Skillshot challenges players to knock down more targets than their opponent in a carnival-style shooting gallery, and the game’s Hoops mode only lets players score points by executing a successful grab move on their opponent to slam dunk them into a basketball hoop. There’s also a new four-player battle mode called Team Fight that pits two teams against each other while simultaneously handicapping both by tying each player to her teammate. Basically, if your partner gets thrown by an opponent, you do too — forcing players to work together to succeed.

As our time with Arms wound down, I left feeling a little nostalgic — not for the Wii Sports Boxing experience Nintendo is worried Arms will be mistaken for but for the original Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo 64. Like Smash, Arms is a lighthearted, competition-focused brawler with endearing characters, unique stages and excellently balanced gameplay. The game is easy to pick up, and it’s the perfect local multiplayer experience to share with friends — but it also seems difficult to master, which may lend it enough complexity to keep competitive gamers engaged. It’s this depth that sets it apart from Wii Sports Boxing and what will make the game a worthy addition to the Switch library of those who can see past the superficial similarities of Arms’ gesture-based control scheme.

Arms will likely wind up being a game very much like Splatoon — a fun, imaginative ideal for competitive multiplayer that doesn’t completely make sense until you try it for yourself. Fortunately, Nintendo seems to understand this: Nintendo Switch owners will be able to try Arms for free during Global Test Punch events, during the last weekend of May and the first weekend of June. If the free taste gets you hooked, you won’t have to wait long for the full game either: Arms launches for Nintendo Switch on June 16th.

First ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ trailer points to a fall release

It’s been a long wait since the first teaser trailer, but we finally have our first good look at CBS’ streaming-exclusive Star Trek: Discovery series. The first trailer promises a “fall” release window, and the accompanying press release reveals its run has been extended from 13 episodes to 15, and that it will include a “Talking Trek” aftershow. We’ve heard plenty about its cast (including the likes of Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green), and production delays, but we’re still waiting for the show to appear so fans can finally decide if it’s worth signing up for CBS All Access.

Source: Star Trek (YouTube), CBS Press Express

Small island prison first to install anti-drone ‘forcefield’

Prisons have a drone problem, in that they’re being used to fly drugs and other contraband over walls and into the hands of inmates. Dealing with these airborne mules is tricky because you either need to hope they crash or catch their operators in the act, but one prison is taking a more proactive approach to stopping undesirable deliveries. Alongside other security upgrades, the small, 139-capacity Les Nicolles Prison in Guernsey, Channel Islands, is said to be the first in the world to receive an anti-drone fence. It’s not a physical barrier, but an invisible wall that jams pilot signals and stops drones from passing beyond its threshold.

Two British companies, Drone Defence and Eclipse Digital Solutions, adapted existing jamming technology to create the “Sky Fence.” A network of roughly 20 “disruptors” is being installed in and around the prison’s perimeter to create a 600-meter (nearly 2000-foot) high, virtual wall through which drones shall not pass. Well, that’s the idea when Sky Fence goes into operation next month, anyway.

As Drone Defence CEO Richard Gill explains, the invisible wall was developed a preventative measure that isn’t designed to knock airborne drones out of the sky. “It will look like it is bouncing off a forcefield. The operator’s video screen will go black and they will lose control. Drones made in the last few years are all designed to return to the last point at which they were under control if the signal is lost. It won’t bring the drone down because if it did and it hit someone or caused damage that would create issues of liability.”

Via: Gizmodo

MIXHalo uses your headphones to fix terrible concert sound

If you’ve ever been to a concert where everything sounded awful — perhaps because of the speakers, or the room acoustics — you’d understand the pitch behind MIXHalo. Developed by Incubus guitarist Mike Einziger, it’s a way for concert goers to hear the audio coming from the stage mixer with their own headphones. The company developed a custom WiFi technology that pipes the audio to potentially thousands of nearby phones with very low latency.

It might sound a bit pie in the sky, but MIXHalo proved that its technology works during a live demonstration at TechCrunch Disrupt today, which involved Incubus playing alongside one of its investors, Pharrell Williams.

And, before you roll your eyes at the idea of an audience jamming to their own headphones, consider the fact that many musicians are already doing this with in-ear monitors. “We have a much clearer sound on stage than what’s in the audience,” Einziger said.

Tuning into the the MIXHalo session was pretty simple: I downloaded the app, joined its private wireless network, and then went back and pressed play within the app. It only works with wired headphones for now (sorry, iPhone 7 owners), because the company was focused on delivering a low-latency experience. That makes plenty of sense, after all. If you’re at a concert, even slight delays between what’s happening on-stage and coming through your headphones could be jarring.

As someone who’s particularly picky about my sound quality, I was surprised at just how good the MIXHalo stream sounded. I could clearly hear all the lyrics during Incubus’ Drive and make out individual instruments, something that’s rarely possible at concerts. I also didn’t lose out on the concert experience much, either, since I could still hear and feel the playback from the live instruments. I paid particular attention to the drummer during the demo, and surprisingly enough, I didn’t notice any delays between beats.

When I cranked my RBH EP-3 earbuds to max volume, I also didn’t hear any distortion or compression artifacts. It’s admittedly tough to judge audio quality accurately amid the noise of a live event, though. There was the occasional hiccup during the stream, but it corrected itself quickly. Incubus rounded out the event by backing Pharrell’s Get Lucky, a musical collaboration I never expected to sit through.

According to Engadget’s Roberto Baldwin, a music nerd who often spends weekends rocking out on stage, MIXHalo could be particularly useful for anyone concerned with hearing loss. Concerts can get incredibly loud, after all, so many regulars end up wearing earplugs to keep things at a manageable level. It could also be great for anyone hard of hearing, he notes.

MIXHalo is still developing its technology, but it hopes to head to concert venues by this fall.

Today Weather – Forecast Android app review

There are many weather apps on Android that all tell the weather but very few do it in a way that looks as good as Today Weather – Forecast.

Today Weather is a great weather app that puts the information you need to know right in front of you in a clear and easy to understand way. What makes Today Weather stand out are the vibrant colors and in particular the black background that seems to make everything pop.

There is an easy to use slide-in menu to easily access the weather at your location and also various pre-set locations to get an idea, for example, of what the weather is like at your next vacation destination. There is also a 7-day forecast so you’ll be sure to not get caught out when planning your days out.

Each weather update and location are complimented by crowd-sourced photos that make the weather overview look stunning. Breaking down the weather per day, you’ll see the air quality with UV index, actual temperature, humidity, wind speed, air pressure, and sunrise/sunset times. Simply swipe left or right to move between your many different locations.

The settings for the Today Weater app are super simple and this is what I like about the app, in that you don’t have a ton of settings to tweak and configure; simply set your location and you’re good to go.

The app looks great on the Galaxy S8 because of the black background and display on the device, but the app is just very well designed so would look great across the board. I’d love to see an Android Wear companion for this and hope the developer continues to develop this great app.

Today Weather is free and is ad-supported with in-app purchases available to remove the ads. You can grab it now on the Google Play Store here.

Nekteck NK-S1 is a pint-sized powerhouse bluetooth speaker (review)

Go ahead and enter “Bluetooth speaker” into Amazon or Google’s search bar; you will be hit with a ridiculous wave of dozens (if not hundreds) of models to choose from. Some highlight special features, like water-resistance, portability, or some funky shape to get your friends talking.

But in almost every case, you, dear consumer, are just looking for a small, but quality audio product. A speaker that checks off your baseline wish list:

• Portable size
• (At least fairly) non-descript and classic-looking
• Easy and consistent Bluetooth pairing
• Great sound; or at least sounds pretty good at louder, outdoor levels
• Reasonable price. Ok, cheap.

Well good news, I’ve been testing a speaker that checks all of these plus a couple more! It’s the Nekteck NK-S1 Bluetooth speaker.

It’s a mighty mite that is still more than a respectable powerhouse in terms of usability & audio performance.

“But who the heck is Nekteck?!?”, I hear you asking. In all honesty, I asked the same question when offered to review this speaker by my editors; I had zero interaction with them beforehand. Turns out you can think of Nekteck as a competitor to Aukey or even an Anker: a company that has found its niche in offering various low-price but rather high-quality hardware and accessory products to the consumer masses.

In addition to various Bluetooth speakers, they offer earbuds, wireless/battery/wall/solar chargers, iPhone battery cases, car jump starters (the increasingly popular battery-powered style), solar-powered lights, selfie-sticks, USB/Lightning cordage, screen protectors, and even a wireless doorbell system for your home. There’s even a back & neck massager in its offerings.

1 of 4

Speaker straight out of the box

Side-by-side with a Big Jambox

Size difference w/Big Jambox

Top view vs. Big Jambox

The speaker is smaller than I thought when it arrived in its box, coming in at a petite 3″ x 3″ x 7.5″. It feels almost half the size if my Big Jambox. The unit comes in a classy, low-slung black look, with the Nekteck logo low & right. it looks like the sound could come out the unit in a 360° arc, but there are three directions that the speakers fire: front, back, and down.

In the box you get the speaker, USB-to-microUSB charging cable (wall wart not included), a short 3.5 mm audio cable, and a small how-to guide.

The speaker is marketed as a “2.1” unit; meaning you get the normal “2” front-firing channels for stereo sound @ 10 watts, plus there’s an additional “.1” down-firing subwoofer speaker that is meant to add some meat to the low-frequency notes, at an equal 10W. Off this subwoofer are a pair of passive bass radiators front and back to fill out these low-frequency tones.

All the controls are on the top, including:

• Power
• Mute
• Play/Pause
• EQ/Equalizer (more on this in a bit)
• Volume -/+
• Pairing/Bluetooth
• Aux

This control layout is just about perfect, in my opinion. It doesn’t overwhelm you with choices, but it doesn’t make it so sparse that you’re left scratching your head as to how to operate the thing.
On the back of the unit is the micro-USB charging port and 3.5 mm aux audio jack, if you feel the need to cable the speaker to your phone or a different audio unit.
(Why would you do this? Well, two reasons that I can think of: 1.) Your device, like an older stereo or TV, may not have Bluetooth, or 2.) You may like the sound coming via a cable that much better.)

After the requisite charging and firing up the speaker, you are greeted with a pretty awful female recording to confirm power is on. As nice as the speaker sounds, this voice-over is pretty bad.

One feature of this speaker I absolutely adored is its ease of pairing with Bluetooth sources I’ve had some speakers that have flat-out refused to pair up, or seem to only when the moon is at a waning crescent….it can be that weird with some units.  All you do is press the wireless/Bluetooth button (looks like a wi-fi simple, but it gets the point across), and turn on ‘search’ in your source’s Bluetooth settings. I’ve tried it on a half-dozen devices, and every time the pairing happened within mere seconds (complete with a cringe-worth “Pairing successful!” announcement from the voice-over). My 14-year-old figured it out without a blip, which simply made me smile.

OK, now for the audio performance. In all, I’m pleasantly surprised by the audio chops of this little speaker. It can handle both small room background filler (accomplished with aplomb playing Vitamin String Quartet while preparing a meal), as well as outdoor bass-booming party music (rocking Jock Jams while CRUSHING my middle-schoolers in driveway basketball!).

This speaker has two secrets that allow for this to happen so well.

The first we’ve covered already; the dedicated subwoofer. It fires downwards, and because the speakers sits on wide rubber feet, this down-firing bass can then radiate out in all directions in a reflected fashion. Also, the front and back-facing ‘radiators’ (essentially tubes), allow for any remaining bass to escape laterally, filling the sound in a more direct vector. The overall sound can be just a tiny bit muddy (missing some of the filled-out mids & piercing high notes), but given the size of the unit, it’s completely forgivable. And I must emphasize the tiny bit part, as once you consider this speaker retails for $60, you realistically cannot fault it. Or you’re some kind of audiophile-butthead expecting $500 performance out of a $60 unit. Either way.
The second is that EQ/equalizer button on top of the unit. This switches the speaker between two modes: a low-power ‘clean mode’ and a bass-pumping ‘party mode’. The clean mode is perfect for in the kitchen during cooking, or in the bathroom while you’re
Listening to some very clean string music while powdering my nose….

prepping for the day. The mids and highs are really allowed to shine, and your music comes out extra-crisp here (I also highly recommend this mode when you’re using it as a speakerphone extension….voice frequencies are so much clearer). The party mode pumps up the subwoofer, adding extra “oomph” into all your tracks. Don’t get me wrong, this mode was used in-house on more than one occasion, and worked very well here too; just don’t expect your classical music to really sound great in this mode.

The battery is listed as a 2000 mAH, stating you should get 8 hours of playback and 300 hours of standby. I never did get close of either of these number to really test the unit, but it’s likely close and also probably depends on how loud you blasting your music, as well. The speaker uses Bluetooth 4.1 with a 10 meter rated coverage; I feel safe in giving that claim a thumbs-up as I ran all through and around the house during my time with it and never had a single dropout….it actually performed much better than my bigger (and more expensive) Big Jambox.

Overall I really, really love the Nekteck NK-S1 Bluetooth speaker. I received a great combination of size, audio quality, Bluetooth consistency, and ease-of-use, that I had yet to really grasp in the world of wireless audio. The thing was an instant hit with my family, was quickly became the go-to unit around our house, leaving several other options collecting dust. I can only highly recommend the NK-S1 speaker for you home, too!

You can pick up the Nekteck speaker from Amazon.