Project Ara reaches beta status, 100 testers will receive the device
Remember Phonebloks aka Project Ara? Yeah, that “crazy” modular smartphone concept by Motorola which Google took over and has been working on ever since. Well, it turns out Google has some great news for us, Project Ara reached beta status.
So, here’s the gist. Google launched “Scouts” program in October last year. That very same program attracted 30,000 people who answered questions and completed all sorts of challenges in order to help Project Ara. Out of 30,000 people Google picked only 100 lucky ones who will be Project Ara’s beta testers. They’ll receive a physical device, for free of course, and will then test it. It is unknown when will this happen though. Google said that it will take another 8 months until Project Ara hits the market though, which is a bit longer than the earlier report suggested, but that’s not so far away when we think about it. Until then you can sign up for future updates if you follow the source link below, just scroll down to the bottom of the page.
We are eagerly expecting more information on this and basically can’t wait until the product hits the market. How about you?
Source: Google
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The Google Cube mixes up your visual music experience with 6 sided music Videos
Google is always playing about with new ideas and technology. The few things we ever see are plenty to keep us interested in what might be coming. A new music centric experiment has begun called the Cube. The Cube is an interactive visual media box. Like a Cube, it offers six sides, each side offering a different visual music video for your enjoyment.
Google partnered up with an Australian band, The Presets, to put together the first working demo of the Cube. The song is called ‘No Fun‘. The main song plays in the background while other aspects and mixes play in sync on various sides of the cube. You can rotate around cube with your finger, or your mouse. View from one side, multiple sides or open the cube up and lay it flat for an even more intense experience. I bet you want to check it out, right? Well, you can. Just hit play below and experience the Cube for yourself, minus the cool Google Cube boxes they had in the video above.
If you want a bigger cube to play around with, head over to nofun.thepresets.com.
Source: 9to5Google
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Listen as a Google-backed piano turns live radio streams into ‘world music’
If Google promised to fund your bohemian lifestyle for six months, in return for some kind of interactive art installation, what would you create? For the New York-based artist, Zach Lieberman, the answer was something totally out of the ordinary: He built the world’s most connected digital piano, which plays notes extracted from our planet’s cacophony of live radio streams.
To our minds, Lieberman’s piano is one of the most interesting offerings at the Google-sponsored DevArt exhibition, which opens at the Barbican in London tomorrow. The show is all about “art made with code,” so its fitting that the amount of programming involved in Lieberman’s project is relatively huge. Servers in the cloud decode and analyze hundreds of live MP3 streams, looking for sounds that match the pitch of a musical note. When someone plays the keyboard, these notes are then recoded back into MP3′s and played through a 360-degree speaker array, so that the direction of the sound matches its geographic origin relative to where you’re standing. Sound complicated? In practice, it’s actually very simple — and also strangely rewarding, especially when you hit an unexpected chord, like a classical cello recording mixed with an Islamic call to prayer and a Greek DJ yelling about something unintelligible.
Filed under: Misc, Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Alt, Google
Google Voice integration with Hangouts is nearly done, debug tool suggests
Google Voice integration with Hangouts is just a matter of time. We wrote about it earlier this year. Hangouts would then be Google’s unified chat client, it would serve all your communication needs. This merger of sorts is one step closer to completion.
A Reddit user managed to get a screenshot of Google Voice integrated Hangouts app thanks to a debug menu. Mentioned user used an app called #DebugAllTheThings in order to get it to work. You can download the debug utility on the XDA page linked below and see it for yourself, though you’ll have to be rooted. The integration won’t work, of course. You can try to run it but you’d be out of luck, the best you can do is get what is shown already via the screenshot below.
Source: Reddit and XDA
Via: Pocketnow
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Google’s trippy Cube experiment lets you play DJ with six videos at once
If you’re bored with regular music videos, there’s now something a little more interactive from Google called The Cube. It sprang from the Creative Labs division, which has done similar music video experiments in the past. As you can see in the embed below, you can manipulate the box by grabbing it with a mouse or finger and revealing different videos on each face. As you move from one side to another, the music also mixes in rhythmic sync, playing two or three tracks at once. Google cooked up the idea at a conference earlier, and hopes to demo more projects on it in the future. It works on a computer or recent Android handset with the latest version of Chrome. After trying it ourselves on a Nexus 5 with Chromecast, we’d recommend sitting down first, though.
Via: Techcrunch
Source: The Presets
Google’s Smarty Pins challenges you to a game of geography trivia
Google must have heard the cries of people desperate for something to do on lonely after-work nights, because it just launched a new trivia game called Smart Pins. Unlike QuizUp or Jeopardy, Smarty Pins (yes, the name’s a pun) is a map-based game that tests your knowledge on geography across a number of categories. Think of it as sort of a reverse Google Maps search — the game asks you a question, and you drop the famous Maps pin on the right location. For instance, we chose Entertainment when we tested it the first time, and the game asked us where you can find 42 Wallaby Way, which you might remember as P. Sherman’s address in Finding Nemo.
Get the answer wrong, and the game won’t only insult you just a bit (“Well, at least you got the planet right.”), but also deduct miles from the 1,000 total you’re given at the beginning of the game. You can move on to the next question without penalty if you put the pin on the correct location, but don’t feel too bad if the game isn’t too impressed (“Wow. Did you Google that? :)”). Thankfully, you’ll at least start in the general region or country where the right answer’s located, so you can blindly drop the pin and hope luck’s on your side.
Via: TheNextWeb
Source: Smarty Pins
Source code for Android “L” preview is now available in AOSP, Nexus 4 and 7 (2012) included
Android L preview is hot at the moment. Everyone is talking about it and we can’t wait for Google to release it when it’s done, hopefully this Fall. Google released Android “L” preview for Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013) only, but there seems to be hope for Nexus 4, first-gen Nexus 7 and a Nexus 10.
Thanks to Android Police we managed to find out that Google released a source code for Android “L” preview. We were surprised to find out that they did it for both Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (2012), even the Nexus 10, considering people feared Google might not push the “L” update to those device, me included.
Here are the links:
- LG Nexus 4
- LG Nexus 5
- Asus Nexus 7 2012 ( Wi-Fi)
- Asus Nexus 7 2012 (LTE)
- Asus Nexus 7 2013 (Wi-Fi)
- Asus Nexus 7 2013 (LTE)
- Samsung Nexus 10
Finally some indication we might se “L” pushed to some older Nexus devices, way to go Google!
Source: AOSP
Via: Android Police
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Songza now a Google owned service, could bode well for Google Play Music
Songza has now become part of the Google. Songza is a music curating service that does its best to offer you up tunes that are right for you at any given moment. Many of you out there might have and love it already. The details of the deal were not announced, not that we saw anyways. Google and Songza both state that there won;t be any immediate changes with the service. Google did say that they will be exploring ways to integrate Songza into Google Play Music and look for potential opportunities within YouTube and other products.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’re becoming part of Google. We can’t think of a better company to join in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do. No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use.
Songza is apparently ‘walking on sunshine’ as well they should be. Anyone out there a huge fan of Songza What do you hope Google brings to Play Music?
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Google Following in Apple’s Footsteps With Songza Purchase
Just over a month after Apple announced plans to purchase Beats Electronics and the Beats Music service, Google has made its own music purchase, acquiring streaming music service Songza.
First launched in 2007 and revamped in 2011, Songza is a curation-based music service much like Beats Music. Songza offers a multitude of customized playlists created by music experts, which revolve around different moods and activities. For example, in its iPhone app, Songza provides playlists for “Working Out,” “Waking Up Happy,” “Feeling Confident,” and more.
Beats Music, meanwhile, boasts “in-house curators” that provide handpicked albums and playlists based on a user’s personal tastes. There’s also a feature called “The Sentence,” which offers playlists based on location, feeling, and genre. The two services are both similar in regards to their emphasis on human curation, which is becoming a must-have feature in the streaming music arena. Beats Music’s focus on curation was one of the driving factors behind Apple’s purchase of the service.
Beats Music app on the left, Songza app on the right
Apple has plans to keep Beats Music separate from its own iTunes and iTunes Radio offerings, and Google too has said that Songza will remain independent, though it has plans to integrate Songza features into Google Play Music and other Google services in the future. Both Songza and Beats Music are set to remain available on multiple platforms.
We aren’t planning any immediate changes to Songza, so it will continue to work like usual for existing users. Over the coming months, we’ll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music. We’ll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products.
Like Beats Music, which had 250,000 subscribers in May three months after launching, Songza is relatively small at five million users compared to competitors like iTunes Radio, Pandora, and Spotify. The major differentiating factor between the two services is cost — Songza is free and ad-supported while Beats Music requires a monthly subscription.
The terms of the deal between Google and Songza were not disclosed, but some reports have suggested Google paid around $15 million for the service. Apple’s Beats deal is still awaiting regulatory approval and is expected to close next quarter.
Google snatches up streaming service Songza
Google has just purchased music streaming service Songza and, while the exact terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed, it reportedly involves what financial experts refer to as “a boat load of money.” Apple boosted its streaming music presence by picking up Beats. So it only makes sense that Google would have to fire back with an acquisition of its own. Like Beats, Songza relies pretty heavily on actual human curation to build playlists. The newest member of the Mountain View family uses contextual data about you to decide the best playlist for you at any given time. These lists are put together by DJs, musicians and music critics rather than some algorithm that looks at meta data like genre or BPM. These lists can get you pumped for a work out or just get you through a slow work day, but what they’re not is a Pandora style infinite radio station.
For now, the service will continue as normal, but expect to see it curated lists and powerful data stores brought to bear on Play Music and YouTube. See, Songza knows not just what people listen to, but when they listen to it, what the weather is like and where they are. Imagine this coming together with the rest of Google’s contextually-driven services. You could wake up one morning and Google Now will have already selected a playlist for you from All Access. Seeing as how it was a rainy Monday morning and you had along commute ahead of you, Google decided a set of tunes hand picked by Morrissey would perfectly match your mood.
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