A farewell tour of Google I/O 2015
After two furious days of news — both expected and not — Google I/O has finally come to a close. We’re still summing up our thoughts about the show and what Google’s new future looks like, but we wanted to take you on one last stroll through Moscone West as I/O wound down to see what it’s like being in a playground for some of the smartest, craziest people in the world. Join us, won’t you?
Roberto Baldwin contributed to this story.
Filed under: Mobile
Recommended Reading: The new and improved ‘Halt and Catch Fire’
Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
Hard Reboot: The Excellent Season 2 Makeover of ‘Halt and Catch Fire’
by Andy Greenwald
Grantland
Despite an interesting premise, AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire never really took off during its first season. The show that chronicles the effort to reverse engineer an IBM PC in a Texas garage got a full revamp for season two, though, and Grantland’s Andy Greenwald explains how the changes have drastically improved the series for version 2.0.
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Google’s Ingenious Plan to Make Apps Obsolete Perhaps the most interesting announcement at this week’s Google I/O was Now on Tap. It’s an extension of the card-based tool that keeps tabs on your screen to provide relevant info from around the web the instant you need it. The crazy part? It’s not even completely finished and the folks that have spent time with it say the new tech is a game changer for Android devices. |
Your iPhone Now Has Virtual Reality, Compliments of Google Samsung and Google had both offered VR to Android phones, but with the second-gen version of Cardboard from the folks in Mountain View, iPhones can get in on the virtual reality action, too. And the goal is ever clearer: Make it cheap and accessible and let people’s creativity run wild. |
[Image credit: Tina Rowden/AMC]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
With Android Pay, Google gets mobile payments right
Even though Google started the whole mobile payment thing years ago with Google Wallet, it never really took off with the masses. Google’s newly announced Android Pay, however, might. Instead of relying on you to load the app and unlock it with a PIN, Android Pay lets you simply tap your phone on an NFC terminal to approve the purchase. In addition, Google is also allowing Android Pay to be integrated in apps like Lyft, Grubhub and Wish, so users can easily use that to pay for things. I just used Android Pay here at Google I/O, and I can say this: If it’s as easy to use in real life, then I suspect mobile payments are about to be a lot more ubiquitous.
Google had set up a Coke vending machine in the press area at I/O for the Android Pay demo, along with a couple of Nexus devices that were already preloaded with the software. To buy a Coke, all I had to do was tap a Nexus 6 to the terminal, and I saw an American Express card along with a MyCoke Rewards loyalty card appear on the screen. This, a Google spokesperson tells me, is because the phone is smart enough to know that I’m using Android Pay at a Coke vending machine.
It showed me how many rewards points I had, and I could then choose to either pay with points or the card. I opted for the former, confirmed the purchase, selected my choice and out came a 20-ounce bottle of Coke Zero from the dispenser. The spokesperson tells me that the same thing could work if you’re shopping at Walgreens or any other merchant with a rewards program — the phone will recognize where you are and offer up the appropriate points info. Android Pay should be compatible with any phone with Android 4.4 or higher, though Android M will offer up fingerprint authentication as well.
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I also used a Nexus 5 with Android Pay to make an in-app purchase. Next to the Coke machine was a “store” of sorts with a variety of Android gift items like t-shirts and mini-collectibles. Using an app called Wish, I was able to select what I wanted — an Android toy in this case — and then selected the “Buy with Android Pay” button. I go through the usual cart check out process, and I was done — no need to enter my card information or anything. The same would go for other apps like Lyft, Uber, and GrubHub.
The whole process strikes me as practically identical to that to Apple Pay. Even the appearance of the credit card wallet on the Android Pay interface looks very similar. In fact, just like Apple Pay, the transactions are sorted through something called tokenization, where a virtual account number is created and shared with merchants to manage payments.
But what about Google Wallet? Well if you already have a Wallet account, you can choose to transfer over all of your Wallet-linked cards to be used in Android Pay. Wallet itself isn’t going away either — you can still use that for peer-to-peer payments.
As for which merchants will support Android Pay? Well, a lot — over 700,000 retailers will be on board, including Macy’s, Whole Foods and Walgreens. Basically, any place that offers Apple Pay, will also be Android Pay compatible. That means that pretty soon, almost anyone with a relatively modern smartphone will be able to pay for things with their phone. Now to see if that actually happens.
Don’t miss out on all the latest news and updates from Google I/O 2015. Follow along at ourevents page.
Filed under: Cellphones, Google
Google and Qualcomm squeezed Project Tango tech into a smartphone
It seems like a decent of chunk of Google’s big news today deals with its partnerships. The search giant is already teaming up with Levi’s to explore the realm of smart Jacquard clothes, and now Google has confirmed that it’s been working with Qualcomm to build its Project Tango world-sensing cameras into the chipmaker’s reference phone designs. Those Tango-phones will be seeded developers and devices makers for now, and thanks to the arcane decisions that ultimately define a company’s device-making strategy, we might not ever actually see a consumer-ready Tango phone. Still, Google’s long-term ambitions are pretty clear: It’d like to get these Tango devices into our pockets en masse, and a closer relationship with one of the world’s biggest mobile chipmakers is a great way to do it.
Before we go any further, yes, there are already Tango phones out there. Thing is, there seemed only to be a very small number of them, and they were earmarked specifically for developers who proved they had something cool to use them for. Now that Tango tech is winding up in a reference design — a sort of pre-production working mockup of a phone — the leap toward a Tango-ready consumer phone is almost trivial. That future is probably still aways off, though, so for now the company’s settling for getting software creators more comfortable with Project Tango’s quirks. Google announced yesterday that developers could buy Project Tango development kits for $512 starting next week, but there’s one rub: Not everyone wants to carry around a 7-inch tablet with a trio of crazy cameras on its back. By squeezing down the size of those cameras and optimizing them to play nice with Qualcomm’s crazy-popular Snapdragon chipsets, Google and Qualcomm have made Tango way more convenient for developers to play with (eventually) and opened up another route to bring Tango to the teeming masses.
Yes, another route. Last year, Google announced at another ATAP panel that it was working with LG to bring Tango to tech to consumers in early 2015 — a launch window that’s pretty clearly come and gone. A Tango smartphone in the works at the time reportedly got killed too, the thing is, we’re in a pretty different place now. We now live in an age where your smartphone can double as a surprisingly decent VR headset thanks to a foldable hunk of cardboard and some lenses. Is it really such a stretch to think Google might want to build a way for us to capture content that can relatively easily be converted to VR with the very same devices? Not at all. The only question is when that intersection comes to pass, and with any luck, the answer is “very soon”.
Filed under: Mobile
Project Brillo: Android for the Internet of Things
Connectivity is king. This is the overall late motif of Google I/O 2015. Google wants to be on your wrist and in your pocket. Google is going to be sitting next to you during your morning commute. It’s no secret that the search giant is trying to infiltrate your living room. What’s the next stop? Google wants Android to all the things; more specifically, Android needs to power the Internet of Things. At this year’s developer conference Google announced Project Brillo, a lightweight, embedded version of its mobile operating system that is designed specifically to handle the Internet of Things.
Brillo is the abstraction that could give us a fully automated home experience. When Google Now was incepted, the engineers in Mountain View wanted to mimic the computer that powered the Star Trek Enterprise. Along with their acquisition of Nest, Brillo looks like it could be the next step in making this kind of scifi tech a reality. Sundar Pinchai spent most of the Brillo segment of the keynote elaborating on Weave, the specific API framework that is meant to standardize all communication between Brillo devices. Look for Brillo to be available via preview this Fall. Weave should be published soon thereafter.
The post Project Brillo: Android for the Internet of Things appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google’s Cloud Messaging now sends notifications to iOS devices
Google’s made a massive leap forward in cross-platform messaging at Google I/O that will now allow notifications to be sent to iOS devices as well as Android.
Google’s Cloud Messaging is no longer just for Android devices or your web browser since notifications can be also sent to any iOS device.
The update to the service also introduces topics that can restrict notifications to things that you care about rather than everything. For example, a news app can be restricted to sending just notifications about the world of tech.
Whilst the feature will have to be coded into each and every app to take advantage of it, the enhancements made to Google’s Cloud Messaging is a massive leap in the right direction.
The post Google’s Cloud Messaging now sends notifications to iOS devices appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google partners with Udacity to offer Nanodegree in Android development
Google has launched a new effort, in partnership with online learning service Udacity, to help developers become more skilled and capable at developing for the Android platform. The company has created a new credential called a Nanodegree based on a curriculum designed to take 9 to 12 months to complete. The coursework can be completed on your own schedule, but Google suggests at least 10 hours per week be devoted to the effort. The fee is $200 per month although a one week free trial is currently being offered as part of the launch.
In addition to the traditional coursework, students will be engaged in several projects to produce actual apps, add features and capabilities, prepare them for production, and implement Material design concepts. Skills in these areas will be developed using several sample apps that students will build during the course. At the end, students will prepare and develop their own app as part of a Capstone project.
Google thinks developers will want to take advantage of the new Nanodegree in Android development as a way to tap into the continued growth of the Android platform. Android is already activated on over 1 billion devices and Google expects it to grow beyond smarphones to “become the brains behind invisible, ubiquitous cloud-connected computing.”
As part of the launch for this new program, Google plans to invite up to 50 students to Google’s Mountain View headquarters for a career summit. Google is also planning to make this Nanodegree available around the globe. One of the first steps in that effort was to localise the course in Modern Standard Arabic so it could be deployed in Egypt where Google is offering 2,000 scholarships for interested students. Google says other country localisations are being worked on.
Be sure to stick with us for more Google news from Google I/O 2015.
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source: Google/Udacity
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Google debuts Android M, focuses on ‘polish and quality’
With the dust settling on the announcements yesterday at Google I/O 2015, one of the more prominent and expected announcements was that of Android M.
We don’t yet know what the ‘M’ stands for, but some guesses so far include Muffin and Milkshake, but what we do know is that the next major release of Android is looking pretty slick. The new Android M version focuses on polish and design, taking Material Design that was introduced in Android 5.0 Lollipop and enhancing it.
““For [Android] M, we’ve gone back to the basics,” said Google SVP Sundar Pichai. “We’ve really focused on polish and quality; we’ve literally solved thousands of bugs.”“
There’s no release date yet for Android M, but the Developer Preview is available now for a select few devices.
The post Google debuts Android M, focuses on ‘polish and quality’ appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google’s Now on Tap makes Android M smartphones so much smarter
In no particular order, Google’s invading our living rooms, our extremities, our skies, and – curiously – our Android phones. No, really! By announcing Google Now on Tap during today’s I/O keynote, the company’s going all-in on the idea that a Google smartphone isn’t complete without the full power of the Knowledge Graph baked into it. And you know what? I think they’re right. Even after just a few moments messing around with it, I don’t ever want to use an Android device that can’t do what Now on Tap can.
Before we go any further, know this: You’re not going to be able to use this feature just yet. Holding down the home button on a device running the Android M preview yields a sad little pop-up proclaiming these go-anywhere Now information cards aren’t in this software build. At first I thought it was because there weren’t any updated apps that knew to pass along data to Now when I asked for it, but Google product manager Paige Dunn-Rankin kindly set me straight. App developers don’t have to do anything at all; Now parses the information on-screen and tries to surface relevant information like locations, reviews and definitions all on its lonesome. And you know what the crazy part is? Even now, in its nascent, not-even-closed to finish state, it’s amazing.
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Yes, you can the bet the demos on stage — asking what Skrillex’s real name was without actually saying his nom de gibberish — were rehearsed like crazy. Dunn-Rankin’s examples were a little more off the cuff, though. While looking up a Miles Davis record on Ebay, she invoked Now with a long press to reveal biographical information and links to his jaunty tunes on Spotify. Pressing and holding the home button while looking at an Instagram photo brought up its Yelp and Foursquare listings, not to mention a read on how far away we were from it. It works great with voice inputs, too, and the ability to infer the context of a situation is seriously impressive — you can finally speak naturally to Now, and it’ll respond naturally with (almost) exactly what you were looking for. Google’s been blurring the line between regular Android phones and ones that sort of double as helpful assistants since the days of the 2014 Moto X, which would rouse itself from slumber when you called for it, so today’s news is a step we all probably could’ve foretold.
Naturally, not everyone’s as thrilled as I am. Earlier in the day, my colleague Nicole Lee mentioned that the feature would “creep you out even more than before.” I completely disagree. Fine, there might be something initially unnerving about a system that tries to anticipate what you want, but mechanically, it’s not even close to weird. Google Now just looks at the context of a given situation faster than you can, and provides some very logical jumping off points. It’s not scary, it’s just scary efficient… though some would agree only a fine line divides the two.trydocument.getElementById(“fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-238943″).style.display=”none”;catch(e)
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Filed under: Mobile
What sweet treat will the ‘M’ in ‘Android M’ stand for?
In no surprise to anyone, Google announced that its next version of Android will be called “M,” the natural followup to Lollipop and its other edible mobile operating systems. We won’t know for some time what the “M” will stand for and are really hoping it’s not something lame like “Mobile.” Our team came up with a few suggestions of what the sweet treat might be and invite you to guess which one you think will get the honors. If we got it wrong and you have another idea, tweet it to us (we’re @engadget, natch).
What sweet treat will Android’s next operating system be named after?
Filed under: Google
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