Nvidia CEO sees bright future gaming via Android

Nvidia has had a rough start with Android.  Its first relationship with the OS was through hardware, where Nvidia produced its own mobile SoC, Tegra, for Android phones and tablets.  But where the giant that is Qualcomm practically owned the mobile SoC market, Nvidia had quite a challenge to stand toe-to-toe.  Tegra gained little of the market and wasn’t exactly well received.

Nvidia kept at it nonetheless and this year we were given the beastly Tegra X1 chipset, which was incorporated into the recent SHIELD Android console.

I must pause here and reflect on how of a smart move this was.  Not only did Nvidia manage to make a strong contender on an emerging market (Android console gaming), but they also are also repeating what made them successful in the first place, graphics.

While CPU power has peaked out in the mobile space, graphics processing still has room to improve, compared to current-gen gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft.  And Nvidia also brought Android TV to power their console, merging it together their cloud gaming service GRID, to even do what you can’t yet with the current mobile hardware, by off-loading the processing to super-computing servers.

“We believe Android is going to be a major gaming platform, as the PC has become.“

Nvidia CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, showed confidence about their plan forward at Computex this week, recognizing the potential with Android.  According to Gizmodo, Jen-Hsun Huang said “We believe Android is going to be a major gaming platform, as the PC has become. The PC is a gaming oriented platform [and] because it’s open it became a wonderful gaming system. Android is the OS of the cloud, the OS of the internet. This OS will also someday become an important gaming platform”.

It will be great to see how the investment in Android for the home console pans out in the future, being a monkey wrench into we’ve known gaming consoles to be.

Source

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A Closer Look at the New App Settings Menu with Granular Permission Controls in Android M

One of the most anticipated features in the latest and greatest version of Google’s popular smartphone OS, Android M, is granular app permission control. To the average user, this might be the equivalent of speaking a foreign language that does not compute, but for those who prefer to take a safer approach to mobile computing, this is a welcome addition that has been requested for some time now. For those unfamiliar, or even those interested in seeing how it works, let’s take a look at what’s new in the app settings menu in the first Developer Preview of Android M.

The first thing I noticed when looking in the new Settings > Apps menu: there is only one unified screen that has all of your installed apps. In the past, there was a tab for downloaded apps, running apps, and all apps. Now, everything is listed in one place making it easier to find what you’re looking for. In the top right-hand corner, there is a search button (for those of you who like to install tons of apps) and a hamburger menu that has advanced options, a setting to show or hide system apps, and an option to reset app preferences.

The advanced settings menu has the following submenus, which I’ll give you a brief rundown of below:

• Default Apps — Set your default browser, phone, and SMS apps; there’s also an Assist setting that lets the assist app see what you’ve done on your screen.
• App Links — Developers can add an “autoVerify” attribute to their app manifest to tell the operating system that there is no need to prompt the user for certain types of links. When users click on links that meet the criteria, it will bring them straight to the auto-verified app. In this setting field, users can toggle the option to open supported links without asking.
• App Permissions — This is a super handy new field that lists all the possible permissions an app might require of your devices, like your camera, location, and phone. Clicking on any one of these fields will bring up a list of every app installed on your device that uses a particular permission. This can be extremely useful for limiting access to an app from a developer that isn’t 100% trusted. After all, a rogue app with the access to the right app permissions could end up causing more than just a headache to the device owner.
• Ignore Optimizations — Android M features a pretty awesome new battery-saving tool, called Doze Mode. The ignore optimizations tab gives users the ability to select which apps they want to ignore these battery optimizations. By default, Google Play Services, Google Play Store, and Download Manager are all set to ignore, likely because they will not function properly if this option wasn’t selected.
• Memory — Another revamped screen, the memory tab shows each app, how often the app is running, and the amount of RAM each app is accountable for consuming. This can be particularly useful when tracking down rogue apps that chew through battery life and cause your device to perform slowly.

So, What are Granular App Permissions?

Granular app permissions allow the user to pick which permissions a given app has access to. This can be tested by selecting an app from the Settings > Apps menu. The menu here has also been revamped, now displaying the amount of storage the app is using, the amount of data the app has used, permissions, notifications, defaults, and battery consumption — virtually everything you could want to know about said app. Clicking the permissions button leads you to the list of permissions the app in question can use, along with toggle switches that allow you to turn on and off each permission. For example, the Android Wear app uses the following permissions:

• Contacts
• Phone
• Calendar
• Location
• Microphone
• SMS

Any of these permissions can be denied by the user, for any number of reasons. In the case of trusted apps, you won’t likely disable many permissions, but it’s always nice to be able to do so if the need arises. When it comes to apps from developers you are not familiar with, you can now at least test their apps with total control over which permissions these apps can and cannot access.

Pretty nifty, right?

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SoundHound reveals a Powerful Assistant App-Hound

We all know SoundHound as a song identification service but today they announced the project called “Hound” on which they have been working for nearly a decade . Hound is voice-controlled assistant just like Google-Now but much more powerful than the latter.

Hound takes speed and accuracy to a whole new level by combining speech recognition and language understanding. This Speech-to-Meaning capability makes Hound the new way to search and do things faster without typing.

The app interface is fairly Material design which will attract users. Hound can do all the basic stuff that other personal-assistant can do like set alarm and reminder,navigate to particular direction. Along with this, it can be used for finding hotel that matches your detailed criteria and checking the stock market.

Hound is currently available in Beta and requires an invite to try out the app.  In my opinion Hound is the hybrid of Google-Now and Siri. Considering that SoundHound is almost perfect in matching lyrics with the song, this is a good time for the company to try is hand in voice-recognition.

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Japanese robot moves heavy objects by putting its back into it

When you need to move something but it’s too heavy to lift off the ground, most of us default to one of two strategies: find someone stronger, or shove it along the floor instead. Researchers from the University of Tokyo’s JSK Laboratory are now teaching robots to do the latter. The latest version of its HRP-2 is able to analyse an object, say a heavy crate on tiny rollers, and try different methods of exerting force. Much like a human, lower force strategies mean pushing or pulling with its hands, while higher strength methods include leaning in with a single shoulder or its back. The robot will monitor each attempt and automatically switch to increasingly higher force strategies if it finds the object still isn’t moving. Depending on its progress, the HRP-2 will also alter its footwork to ensure it doesn’t fall over; a slow-moving object might require shorter steps, for instance, to make sure it’s not caught off guard by a sudden change in resistance. It can’t replace your local moving company (yet), but it’s nice to see a robot finally putting its back into something.

[Image Credit: University of Tokyo/JSK Laboratory]

Filed under: Robots

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Source: IEEE Spectrum