Google’s new PhotoScan app makes it easy to digitize old prints
On the surface, Google Photos has a simple mission: to store all your pictures. Specifically, Google says it wants the service to be a home for all of your photos, and today that mission expanded to encompass the old photos you took on a point-and-shoot back in the ’90s. The company just released a new app called PhotoScan for iOS and Android, and it promises to make preserving the memories in your old printed photos much easier. Additionally, while Google was at it, it also issued several updates to its core Photos app.
PhotoScan is definitely the star of the show, though. According to engineers from Google who showed the app to the press earlier today, PhotoScan improves on the old “photo of a photo” technique that many now use to quickly get a digital copy of old prints. It’s also a lot cheaper than sending pictures out to be scanned by a professional, not to mention faster and more convenient than using a flatbed scanner.
When you open up the PhotoScan app, you’re prompted to line up your picture within a border. Once you have the picture aligned, pressing the scan button will activate your phone’s flash and start the process of getting a high-quality representation of the photo. Four white circles will appear in four different quadrants of the image. You’ll be prompted to move your phone over each dot until it turns blue; once all four dots are scanned, the app pulls together the final image.
When moving the phone to scan each dot, the app is taking multiple images of the picture from different angles to effectively eliminate light glare — something Google cited as the biggest culprit that ruins digital pictures of photo prints. In practice, in Google’s tightly controlled demo setup, it worked perfectly. It was easy to see how the lights in the room cast glare on the photo print and equally obvious how the app managed to eliminate it in the final scan. It’s a bit of an abstract process to describe, but it worked as promised. We’ll need to test it further outside of Google’s own testbed, but the early results are definitely encouraging.
The app also lets you adjust the crop to remove any hint of the background surface peeking into the photo, but it’s otherwise a pretty minimal experience. Once you’re done scanning, the app prompts you to save your scans. They’re saved directly to your phone’s storage; you can then upload them to Google Photos or the backup service of your choice. Google specifically said that it wanted this app to exist outside of Google Photos so that people could scan images and use whatever service they want to back them up.
Beyond PhotoScan are some noteworthy additions to the proper Google Photos app. The biggest change here is that there are a host of new photo-editing options on board. The Google+ app actually used to have a pretty robust set of editing options, but when Photos was liberated as a standalone app, the editing features were significantly culled down.
As of today, Google Photos for both iOS and Android now has a entirely redesigned set of editing tools and filters. The “auto enhance” feature, which tweaks brightness, contrast, saturation and other characteristics of your photo has been improved thanks to the machine learning technology that is at the core of nearly all of Google’s products. It can look at a photo and recognize what a photo editor might do to try and improve the image. Auto Enhance has long been a solid feature, so seeing it continue to get smarter is definitely a good thing.
If you want to make further adjustments, the simple “light,” “color” and “pop” sliders that were in the previous Google Photos app have been greatly expanded. Now, you can tap a triangle next to “light” or “color” to see a view with a host of more granular editing tools like exposure, contrast highlights, saturation, warmth and so on. Those tools aren’t right in your face, so people who don’t want to dive in can still make adjustments — but those who really want to go deep on editing their pictures will surely appreciate the option. I used to be a big fan of the Google+ photo editing tools so seeing these features come back is very welcome.
Google called out two of those adjustments in particular as things that only it can do with its vast store of photographic information. A new slider called “deep blue” saturates blues in an image like the sky or water to make them more vibrant, and it knows to specifically target those hues while leaving others unchanged. There’s also a skin tone filter that can adjust saturation specifically on a subject’s skin without altering the rest of the image. Other editing programs have similar filters, but Google says that this one is particularly accurate because of the millions of photos it has analyzed — it just has a better sense of what is skin is, compared with other editors.
Lastly, Google added 12 new filters (of course it did) that take advantage of machine learning to be a little smarter than the standard option. Rather than always slapping a default set of adjustments on a picture, Google Photos will make subtle improvements to the image first; it sounds like a combination of auto enhance as well as a filter. But those enhancements will be optimized to work well with the filter you’re adding. It sounds nice, and the filters looked good on the images Google was showing off, but we’ll need to spend some time playing around with it to see if they’re really any better than what Instagram already offers.
Editing is the main addition to Google Photos, but there are a few other improvements here as well. If you’re invited to a shared album, the app will prompt you with suggestions from your own photos to add. It’s another place where Google’s machine learning comes into play. And the movie maker, which can automatically select related photos and set them to a soundtrack, will gain some new event-focused options in the coming months.
The first of those is “lullaby,” a video made by specifically looking for sleeping baby photos and combining that with a peaceful soundtrack. Specifically, Google’s servers can find groups of pictures of the same child and look for ones when it is sleeping and pull those all together. Google said it went for the sleeping baby specifically as a way to put together some calming memories for parents, who always seem to cherish those fleeting moments when their new baby is asleep.
For those of us without kids, Google has a new Christmas memories movie that’ll look at your pictures over the years and pull together ones with Christmas “markers” — things like trees, Santa hats, presents and so forth. In April next year, Google will also start auto-creating movies of pets as well as outdoor moments (timed to launch around Earth day).
All told, this is probably the biggest update to Google’s photo products since it launched in mid-2015. There are plenty of other services that offer near-unlimited photo backups, but Google’s machine learning based on all the data in its systems is second to none. Yes, that requires Google to analyze everything you put into it, but that’s been the case for years now. If you’re comfortable giving Google access to your data, these new photos updates are definitely worth checking out. And if you want to try PhotoScan but are worried about your privacy, you don’t even need to upload your pictures to Google. The new PhotoScan app and updated Google Photos should be available in the app store and on Google Play now.
Google unveils new plans for its London HQ
When Google spent upwards of $1.6 billion securing prime land near King’s Cross station, it immediately set out plans for a new London HQ. They included a rooftop running track, swimming pool and interior cycling ramps, but it didn’t take long for the project to be canned, with the search giant saying it wanted to “challenge ourselves to do something even better.” Fast forward three years and Google CEO Sundar Pichai is town to recommit to its London campus, unveiling new ideas for its first “wholly designed” building outside of the US in the process.
The purpose-built ten story building was designed by Heatherwick Studio and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). It’ll span 650,000 square feet, making up more than half of the company’s complete King Cross campus. The artist render above gives an impression of what Google has planned, with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in lots of natural light and space for multi-level meeting rooms. Google currently occupies one 380,000 sq. ft. development at 6 Pancras Square and will move into a second leased building, currently under construction, in 2018.
“Here in the UK, it’s clear to me that computer science has a great future with the talent, educational institutions, and passion for innovation we see all around us,” says Pichai. “We are committed to the UK and excited to continue our investment in our new King’s Cross campus.”
Google wants to share VR with one million UK school kids
As virtual reality becomes more and more popular, companies are looking at new ways to integrate it into people’s everyday lives. Google, for instance, is keen to ensure that children grow up enjoying the benefits of VR, so the search giant has committed to bringing the technology to one million UK schoolchildren. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in his first visit to Britain since becoming chief, confirmed that the company will offer VR training and resources via its Expeditions programme, allowing teachers to take their students on virtual field trips from the comfort of the classroom.
“Virtual reality can spark students’ imagination and help them learn about topics like how blood flows through the human body or the impact climate change is having on the Great Barrier Reef, in an engaging and immersive way,” Pichai said. “We’ve already received feedback from thousands of teachers in the UK and they believe that Expeditions can improve literacy and writing skills, and help create excitement to complement traditional teaching methods.”
Google’s no stranger to learning experiences for kids. Its Project Blok’s toys help children learn how to code and this past summer, the company put on a number of Summer Squad coding sessions for kids between 8-13. That’s not forgetting its YouTube Kids app, science camps in the US and the 15,000 Raspberry Pis it gave to UK schools back in 2013.
Google Expeditions are open and free to any UK school. To champion the virtual reality app, the Google Expeditions team will visit Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Newcastle and Inverness in the next couple of months, providing headsets to children who may otherwise have never had the opportunity to enjoy it.
Google’s self-driving cars master tricky three-point turns
With supercomputers for brains and perfect 360-degree vision, one would imagine it would be fairly simple for an autonomous vehicle to pass the time-honored driver’s ed test of performing a three-point turn. But according to Google’s self-driving car project October report, that is one of the many things that’s easier said than done for a robot vehicle.
While a human driver can estimate the best angle and distance, the amount of data and information the autonomous vehicle has can actually be a drawback. “Our challenge is to teach our self-driving cars to choose the option that’s not only the quickest, but one that feels natural to passengers,” the report says. So, even though some turns would be easier done in reverse, for example, people prefer to travel moving forward, where they can see what’s happening. “So we’ve taught our cars to mimic these human patterns, favoring wider forward arcs, rather than a series of short movements back and forth.”
In order to get all these turns right, Google’s vehicles are doing a lot more turns than most drivers will probably ever practice before hitting the road – about 1,000 every week. And, despite some hang ups with California’s autonomous vehicle regulations, Google’s vehicles have driven over 2.2 million autonomous miles in Washington State, California, Arizona and Texas to date.
Via: CNET Roadshow
Source: Google Self-Driving Car Project October Report [PDF]
Google is restricting AdSense ads on fake-news sites
Google made headlines recently about the top search result for ‘final election numbers’ being patently false. Now the company is going to keep fake-news sites from using its nigh-ubiquitous AdSense program according to the Wall Street Journal. In a statement, the search giant says that as part of an update to its publisher policies, that it will restrict ad serving on websites that “misrepresent, misstate or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose” of the site.
With the surfeit of questionably sourced-or-written articles that popped up during this year’s election cycle, it’s refreshing to see at least one of the largest players in tech taking responsibility and addressing how information is distributed and presented. That sound you hear is the ball bouncing around on Facebook’s court. We’ve reached out to Google for additional information and will update this post should it arrive.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Google search for ‘final election numbers’ offers up fake news
Search engine technology has evolved rapidly over the past few years, but it’s far from perfect. One week after the US presidential election, the top Google result for “final election numbers” is a WordPress blog called 70News that’s packed with inaccurate information.
The WordPress site appears to be run by one person; it features theories about Trump being chosen by God to lead the United States, plus fear-mongering posts about Muslims and “the brainwashed LGBT community.” The blog post highlighted by Google search is titled, “FINAL ELECTION 2016 NUMBERS: TRUMP WON BOTH POPULAR ( 62.9 M -62.2 M ) AND ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES ( 306-232)…HEY CHANGE.ORG, SCRAP YOUR LOONY PETITION NOW!”
The post sources a tweet, which in turn relies on an article from the ultra-conservative tabloid USA Supreme that’s filled with conjecture about Donald Trump secretly winning the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election. In reality, Hillary Clinton is on track to win the popular contest by nearly 2 million votes and more than 1.5 percentage points, according to New York Times analyst Nate Cohn. That’s a wider margin than Al Gore, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy received in their respective elections.
The Google search blip appears to be the product of an imperfect algorithm. Google searches for “final election numbers,” “final vote count 2016” and similar phrases turn up the WordPress story as the top “In the news” hit, while searching for “election results” populates a Google scorecard with an overview of official data. We’ve reached out to Google about this situation and will update this story as we hear back.
It’s a busy time in the world of fake news. Facebook has recently come under fire for allowing inaccurate and fake stories (many of which are generated by teenagers in Macedonia) to circulate on the site. CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that it was “extremely unlikely” that these stories helped Trump win the presidential election.
Via: The Verge
Moto Z Play review: Buy it for the battery life
You should’ve seen this one coming. Of course Motorola wasn’t going to just release two versions of the Moto Z and call it a year. While the first two — the Moto Z and Moto Z Force — had to bear the weight of flagship expectations and justify the lack of a headphone jack, the Moto Z Play merely had to be inexpensive and not terrible. Well, mission accomplished … mostly. At $449, the Z Play isn’t the cheapest mid-range phone out there, but it clears the “not terrible” bar with more room than I imagined.
All right, all right, there’s no point in being coy. The Moto Z Play is actually pretty great.
Hardware
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way: The Moto Z Play looks almost identical to the Moto Z Force, the hardy modular flagship I tested earlier this year. That’s a good thing. From its dimensions to its fingerprint sensor to the signature camera hump around the back, the Moto Z Play looks and feels like a phone that costs almost $300 more.
The phone’s familiar design also means the return of certain annoying design quirks, like the fingerprint sensor that looks, but doesn’t act, like a home button. (I can’t complain about that too much, though, since the sensor actually works very well.) Even stranger, the so-called Moto Mods that magnetically connect to the Z Play’s back don’t feel quite as seamless as when they’re connected to other Moto Z’s. That said, most people probably won’t know the difference.
These kinds of missteps are offset by a general feeling of sturdiness, thanks in large part to the phone’s solid metal rim. My colleague Aaron rightfully gave last year’s Moto X Play some grief because Motorola didn’t pay close attention to the fine details. That’s true here too, but the caliber of construction here still elevates this mid-range phone into more premium territory. While devices like the Moto G series always felt a little chintzy compared with the more premium Moto X line, that sort of quality gap doesn’t really exist here. That doesn’t mean you can treat the Z Play as harshly as you could a Z Force, though — there’s no ShatterShield display, and the Play’s back is made not of metal, but of easily scratched glass.
The differences don’t end there. The Z Play packs a 16-megapixel camera and a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED screen running at 1080p; the regular Z and Z Force both feature Quad HD displays. That dip in screen resolution was inevitable given the Z Play’s price, but who cares — this thing has a headphone jack sitting next to its USB Type-C port. Motorola is still convinced that a single socket for power, audio and everything else is the way of the future, and its bet was vindicated when Apple did the same with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. So what gives? Motorola’s rationale is simple: The design of the Z Play’s logic board had room for the port. The mixed message is a little confusing, but hey: No dongles necessary this time.
You wouldn’t know just by looking at it, but the Moto Z Play sits lower on the performance totem pole than either of the Moto Z’s that came before it. There’s an octacore Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset inside, an Adreno 506 GPU and 3GB of RAM, all of which last for a very long time when paired with the Z Play’s 3,510mAh battery.
Remember: The Moto Z Play is modular (as evidenced by the multi-pin connector on its back), so you could strap on a magnetic battery mod for even more battery life. If only Motorola were as generous with the storage options: There’s 32GB of room on board, and only 24GB is available to you from the get-go. At least the micro-SIM tray has a spot for a microSD card with support for up to 2TB of additional space.
This isn’t my first time taking the Moto Z Play for a spin, but this version is different. It’s a fully unlocked GSM model, ready for action on AT&T and T-Mobile in the United States. If you’re a Verizon customer and don’t see yourself switching anytime soon, there’s also a version of the phone just for you — it’s physically identical but packs all of Big Red’s usual bloatware. (More on that later.)
Display and sound
It used to be that buying anything less than a flagship phone meant you got stuck with a lousy screen. Oh, how times have changed. Case in point: The Moto Z Play packs a 5.5-inch AMOLED panel offering respectable viewing angles and great clarity; I never missed the extra resolution on the Moto Z and Z Force. This screen does seem a little dim compared with the Z and Z Force displays, but you’d be hard-pressed to spot the difference when you’re just sitting around inside. Taking the phones outside is a different story, though: The Z Play’s screen is merely passable under bright sunlight, while the Z and Z Force can dial up the brightness quite a bit further. Guess Motorola had to cut corners somewhere.
I’m also fond of how the Z Play renders colors right out of the box: Sunsets and close-ups of wood seem suitably deep, as do the blues and greens that always pop up in landscape photos. If slightly oversaturated colors aren’t your thing, though, you can change things with a trip to the settings (the phone’s display mode is set to “vivid” by default). Toggling the feature to standard mode results in visuals that, while probably a little more accurate, are a lot less fun.
Speaking of things that aren’t much fun, the sound setup here leaves a lot to be desired. Then again, who didn’t see this coming? Motorola used the same lackluster system in the more premium Moto Z and Z Force, with an earpiece that doubles as the main speaker driver when you crank up the volume. Listening to music on a vanilla Z Play is passable at best -– vocals and mids can sound crisp -– and muddled at worst. I wish the Z Play’s speaker was a little louder too, but considering the sort of quality we’re working with, Motorola might have been doing us a kindness by capping the volume.
Thankfully, we have options. First, you can plug in a pair of headphones –- once more, without a dongle! -– and bypass that speaker entirely. Motorola, meanwhile, would much prefer you use that sweet, sweet Moto Mod connector around the back to magnetically lash a completely new set of speakers onto the phone. JBL’s $79 external speaker is the most useful of the multimedia mods available, and while it still focuses on mids and highs, there’s enough heaviness and clarity to its sound that most people I’ve shown it to have enjoyed the experience. You certainly don’t need Moto Mods to use the Z Play, but they are handy.
Software
I’m pleased to report that there isn’t a whole lot to say about the Moto Z Play’s software. Yes, that’s a good thing: It’s fast, familiar and free of the bloatware that comes loaded on the Verizon-branded Z Play. If you’ve used a modern Motorola device, you could probably just leave it at that and move on. If not, well, here’s a little more.
The Motorola that’s endured so much change these past few years still prefers stock Android (in this case, 6.0.1 Marshmallow), leaving us with a software stack that’s largely untouched. That shouldn’t really surprise anyone: Motorola wasn’t going to blaze new software trails on a mid-range version of its flagship device. The look, the app launcher, the underlying functionality — it’s all just Marshmallow.
Motorola’s additions are as subtle as ever, and exist mostly in the form of smart gestures. Waving your hands over the Z Play’s face like a Jedi makes the screen light up, proffering the time and your notifications. Double-twisting your wrist launches the camera, and a relatively new double karate chop fires up the flashlight. (Pro tip: Don’t use your whole arm.)
Relatively new to the mix is a one-handed mode that’s invoked by swiping up from the bottom of the display. Motorola’s implementation isn’t perfect — you can’t resize or move the shrunken window — but it’s really useful if the 5.5-inch screen is a little too big to use with one hand. Perhaps the biggest issue with the feature is that it can be too easy to activate accidentally, which probably explains why it’s not on by default: You’ll have to dive into the included Moto app to enable it. Then there are Motorola’s voice commands, which have steadily gotten more precise since they debuted on the original Moto X three years ago. They’re nice enough to have and work as well as they always did — just don’t expect the same sort of conversational fluidity you’d get from something like the new Google Assistant.
And that’s really it. As a brief aside, this is the first time I’ve used an unlocked version of the Moto Z, and I can’t stress how much nicer it feels to use without all that carrier-mandated bloatware. Android device manufacturers now realize that cleanliness, while not that close to godliness, is a virtue worth exploring when it comes to interfaces. To date, few phone makers match Motorola in its devotion to pure Android, and I’ll keep doling out the kudos as long as the company keeps at it.
Camera
The Moto Z Play’s main camera is a mixed bag, but not for the reasons you’d expect. In terms of pure resolution, the 16-megapixel sensor here sits somewhere between the Moto Z’s 13-megapixel camera and the Z Force’s much better 21-megapixel shooter. Not bad, right? Well, hold on: The Z Play camera works with an f/2.0 aperture, as compared with the f/1.8 apertures used by both of its predecessors. In other words, the Z Play is technically capable of capturing a little more photographic nuance than the bog-standard Moto Z, but lags behind it when it comes to low-light performance. The Z Play’s camera also lacks optical image stabilization, making it slightly more susceptible to blurry edges and obscured faces, especially when it’s dark.
So yes, your poorly lit bar photos won’t turn out great. Even so, the Z Play doesn’t completely drop the ball, and — perhaps more important — it’s capable of producing some really attractive shots when the lights come back up. Colors seem accurately represented (though you might sometimes see whites turn a little blue), and there was often plenty of detail to gawk at. The very act of snapping photos is quick too, with basically zero lag before taking a new shot.
I’ve tested plenty of faster, all-around better smartphone cameras this year, but the Moto Z Play’s is nonetheless remarkable in two ways. First, it’s a little more than half the price of those photographically superior phones. More important, the gap between the camera in this mid-range phone and the cameras in the flagship Moto Z’s can be surprisingly small. The Moto Z Force’s more advanced setup has the clear edge, but under the right conditions it’s easy to get similar results out of all three Z phones.
Meanwhile, the 5-megapixel front-facing camera is perfectly adequate, packing a wide-angle lens for squeezing more friends into selfies, and video footage came out clean, if a little unremarkable. All told, Motorola has a potent little photographic package here, though sticklers for premium quality will want to look elsewhere. And hey, if the camera really doesn’t do it for you, Motorola sure would love if you went out and bought one of those $250 Hasselblad camera mods — it’ll replace that default shooter with a 12-megapixel sensor developed in part by people known for their crazy-expensive cameras.
Performance and battery life
All right, quick recap: The Moto Z Play has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset, 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 506 GPU ticking away inside it. I can already tell some people’s eyes are glazing over because that chipset’s model number doesn’t start with an “8,” but I’m here to tell you the 625 is a capable little slab of silicon. When it comes to thumbing through open apps, swiping through menus and the rest of the day-to-day actions one doesn’t pay that much attention to, the Z Play moves like a flagship phone: quickly and with a minimum of fuss.
For people who ultimately don’t ask much of their smartphones, the Moto Z Play has more than enough power to keep everything moving at a more than reasonable pace. Things can change pretty quickly when you fire up some graphically intensive games, though. That’s when the occasional sluggishness can set in. Again, that’s not a shocker or anything: Mid-range phones are getting better all the time, but most of the not-quite-high-end phones we’ve played with this year act the same way.
OnePlus 3
Moto G4 Plus
AndEBench Pro
8,347
16,678
13,841
16,159
Vellamo 3.0
3,314
5,613
5,202
2,819
3DMark IS Unlimited
13,514
29,117
30,058
9,851
GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
9.8
49
48
6.6
CF-Bench
94,061
45,803
41,653
60,998
SunSpider 1.0.2: Android devices tested in Chrome; lower scores are better.
There is, however, one big upside to this merely average performance: The Moto Z Play’s battery life is absolutely killer. Motorola claims that the phone can run for up to 50 hours on a single charge, and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t my experience over two weeks of testing. Consider my usual workflow: There’s a lot of Slack messages and emails flying around, not to mention a spot of gaming and some podcasts here and there. On typical days the Moto Z Play would stick around for about 45 full hours before needing a recharge.
That’s not two workdays, but nearly two full rotations of the earth. Hell, with Wi-Fi on and connected, I saw the Z Play creep just a little past the advertised 50 hours over a quiet weekend. Obviously, those figures would tank if I spent more than a little time playing Hearthstone or bingeing on YouTube videos, but there’s a certain sort of liberation to be found when you don’t have to constantly fret about your phone living or dying.
The competition
You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but you can get a lot of phone for not much money. The Moto Z Play is a remarkably polished package for $449, but don’t forget to check out these other options too.
The upstarts behind the OnePlus 3 should be proud: They’ve built a flagship-level device that costs only $399. As such, it’s perhaps the best alternate for a device like the Moto Z Play — it packs an incredibly fast Snapdragon 820 chipset, a superior camera and a barely modified version of Android into a sleek metal body. And if you’re on the hunt for even better value, you might want to consider Motorola’s Moto G4 Plus. It’s not as handsome or as long-lasting as the Z Play, but it costs a full $200 less and provides ample power for people who don’t need a full-on flagship.
Ah, but the Z Play has an edge … or least, it’ll appear that way to some people. The Moto Z Play works (and works well) with the full range of Motorola’s Moto Mods, so the functionality you get out of the box is far from the functionality you’ll have in six months, or a year. If this appeals to you, know that there’s very little else out there that can satisfy this modular itch. LG’s G5 was the first major flagship phone that leaned into the idea of a modular body, and it certainly deserves props for its chutzpah. While its ecosystem of “Friendly” accessories is broader than what the Moto Z’s have access to, these add-ons are undeniably less elegant. The extra horsepower afforded by the Snapdragon 820 chipset is nice, but Motorola’s approach to modular design is by far the best.
Wrap-up
It can be hard to get worked up about devices that don’t aspire to be the greatest thing you’ll ever slide into a pocket, but even so: The Moto Z Play won me over. Its occasional lack of horsepower can be frustrating (especially if you’re into gaming), but Motorola deserves credit for building a phone that feels like so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s not perfect, it’s not waterproof and it’s not flashy. What it is, however, is “there for you” because of its tremendous battery life. Between that and the flexibility afforded by a slew of Moto Mods, we have a smartphone that almost redefines what it means to be mid-range.
Google Play Music gets prettier and more intelligent
It’s long overdue but Google Play Music is getting a makeover. The search giant confirmed today that it is in the process of updating its Android, iOS and Web offerings with bright new UI that relies on machine learning to deliver what’s relevant to you. Its AI-like algorithms will identify where you are and what you’re doing, also factoring in things like the weather, to serve up playlists and track recommendations that you didn’t know you wanted but capture your mood at the time.
“When you opt in, we’ll deliver personalized music based on where you are and why you are listening — relaxing at home, powering through at work, commuting, flying, exploring new cities, heading out on the town, and everything in between,” Google says in a blog post. “Your workout music is front and center as you walk into the gym, a sunset soundtrack appears just as the sky goes pink, and tunes for focusing turn up at the library.”
Every time you refresh the new home screen, it will offer various playlists that have relevance to your past listening habits. Listen to new releases on Friday? Then it’ll serve them up. The same goes for upbeat tunes just as you leave work or a collection of tracks from that new artist you’ve just discovered but haven’t had time to catch up on. Google Play Music has also been given a useful feature that determines when you’re without connectivity and automatically delivers an offline playlist based on what you’ve recently listened to.
Play Music is another example of Google using machine learning to improve its services. For a number of years, the company has steadily improved its algorithms to identify, index and caption photos and more recently purge your Gmail inbox of spam. With Spotify pushing personalized playlists via its ‘Just For You’ weekly playlist (as well as Discover Weekly) and Apple highlighting its ‘For You’ section, Google is treading a similar path but can call upon years of experience to deliver a streaming service that it says is “smarter, easier to use, and much more assistive.”
The new features will roll out gradually this week in the 62 countries in which Play Music is available.
Source: Google Blog
Revamped Google Play Music Streams Content Based on User Location, Activity, and Time of Day
Google today announced an overhaul of its Google Play Music streaming platform, with new contextually aware, opt-in music recommendation features that promise a more personal music listening experience.
Building on its stated aim of helping users find the right music for any moment, Google says the fresh take on its streaming service is “smarter, easier to use, and much more assistive”, thanks in large part to deeper integration with machine learning technology that allows it to offer content based on user location, time of day, current activity, and music preferences.
To provide even richer music recommendations based on Google’s understanding of your world, we’ve plugged into the contextual tools that power Google products. When you opt in, we’ll deliver personalized music based on where you are and why you are listening — relaxing at home, powering through at work, commuting, flying, exploring new cities, heading out on the town, and everything in between. Your workout music is front and center as you walk into the gym, a sunset soundtrack appears just as the sky goes pink, and tunes for focusing turn up at the library.
Central to the overhaul is a redesigned home screen that Google likens to “the ultimate personal DJ”, which learns what you like to listen to and when you like to listen to it, presenting content accordingly. Examples include suggesting a users’ workout playlist when they arrive at the gym, offering music for unwinding after a day at the office, and recommending additional songs from new artists the user has previously expressed an interest in.
In addition to the new opt-in personalization features, the overhauled service also includes a new regularly updated offline playlist based on what users listened to recently, enabling subscribers to listen to their favorite music even if they lose their connection.
Powered by the company’s machine learning systems and teams of human curators, Google promises the experience will “keep evolving” and improve the more it’s used, whether that’s through the company’s recently launched Google Home smart speaker, on Chromecast devices such as the new 4K Chromecast Ultra, or its Google Pixel smartphones, which were unveiled last month.
The price of Google Play Music remains $9.99 per month and the company says it’s rolling out the revamped service globally this week across on iOS, Android, and the web.
Tags: Google, Google Play Music
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Google’s defense against anti-trust claims: ‘we’re open’
Google has a response for the European Commission’s anti-trust allegations. In a lengthy blog post, the tech juggernaut addressed the EC’s concerns point by point. That starts with the EC’s stance that Android isn’t in competition with Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, and Google citing the Commission’s own research that 89 percent of survey respondents feel that the two are competitors. That last bit is a recurring theme, with Google pointing toward the survey responses for the EC’s stance on Android’s “stable and consistent framework” across devices as well.
In perhaps the most poignant response, Google made a GIF that illustrates how many apps are typically pre-installed/bundled on Android devices versus the competition — something the EC directly called out. By Mountain View’s count, of the Samsung Galaxy S7 with Android 6.0.1’s 38 pre-installed apps, only 11 were from Google. Contrast that with 39 out of 47 on the Lumia 550 from Microsoft and 39 out of 39 from Apple on the iPhone 7 running iOS 10.0.2.
“Android hasn’t hurt competition, it’s expanded it,” Google’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kent Walker said in a statement. “Android is the most flexibe mobile platform out there, balancing the needs of thousands of manufacturers and operators, millions of app developers and more than a billion consumers.
“Upsetting this balance would raise prices and hamper innovation, choice and competition. That wouldn’t just be a bad outcome for us. It would be a bad outcome for the entire ecosystem, and — most critically — for consumers.”
And with that, the battle moves onward. Maybe the EC’s stance won’t leak ahead of the next round. Maybe.
Source: Google
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