Google is giving you power to control the ads you see online
Google has launched a new portal you can use to personalize the ads you see, and it has begun notifying users about it through either Chrome or Gmail. You can add topics of interest and your age and gender to see advertisements the cater to you on Search, YouTube and other Google services. But if you don’t want to share those info with the big G, you don’t have to — the feature is completely opt in. If you agree to switch it on, you’re also giving the company permission to use your Google account activity on its services. That includes giving it permission to keep track of what ads you interact with and to add that info to its new My Activity site.
My Activity shows how you’ve been using various Google services in neatly arranged cards. It lists every search you do, website you visit, directions you look up, Android apps you use and ads you interact with, among other things. While you’re the only one who can access it, you can still fortunately delete anything on the page, in case somebody else uses your computer. Google will send a notification your way if you haven’t gotten one yet, but you can also access the Ads Personalization page right here.
Via: Wired, Android Police, Recode
Source: Google (My Activity), (Ads Settings), (FAQ)
Alphabet proposes scrapping buses in favor of Ubers
Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet’s smart cities think-tank, wants governments to scrap buses and other forms of public transport. That’s the headline stat coming out of a cache of documents obtained by the Guardian that reveals the firm’s plans for the city of Columbus, Ohio. The 15th largest city in the US recently won a Smart City challenge, complete with $50 million in extra funding from the Department of Transportation. One of the pillars of the proposals is to do away with the remnants of vital public services and scrapping subsidized travel for low-income workers. Instead, these people would be given discounted travel on certain ride-sharing services like Uber.
As part of the competition, Columbus will be handed Sidewalk’s traffic-management software, Flow, free of charge. The product is designed to monitor traffic levels using Google Maps and Waze, with the data coming out the other side used to improve transit routes. Another proposal that Sidewalk is proposing is a unified transit-map app that would compare the journey times and prices of various transportation options. That would make it similar to the app Citymapper, which often thinks around traditional mapping routes for more efficient outcomes.
As for the issue of parking, the proposals suggest that vacant lots would be turned into a market, similar to that of Uber. For instance, on busy days when everyone is heading into town, surge pricing would be activated to help manage demand. In addition, drivers would be directed towards empty spaces that they may not have otherwise found simply driving around the streets they know. In future, private garages and office lots (which are often unused on weekends) could be added to the system. The software isn’t all good, however, and would narc on you if you’ve outstayed your welcome — making it easier for futuristic parking attendants to fine you.
It’s fair to say that Alphabet may not be working in this space entirely out of a civic-minded desire to improve cities for the better. After all, it (and by it, we mean Google’s venture fund) quietly holds a stake in Uber and has its own, well-publicized project to develop a self-driving car that could operate as a cab. The paper also quotes MIT’s Carlo Ratti, who voiced a concern that Alphabet is effectively building itself a monopoly by not opening its platform up to other companies.
There’s also the issue that, in order to implement the proposals, Columbus will have to spend enormous sums of public money to make itself ready for the technology. And yet, the report believes that the city would only receive around $2.25 million for all of its trouble. Fortunately, nothing has yet been agreed, and it looks like some more scrutiny around the details could be worth everyone’s time.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Guardian
Google adds song lyrics to search results
Looking to capitalize on the constant stream of people trying to figure out how does that song go again?, Google unveiled a new featured placement for song lyrics Monday. So, the next time you google the lyrics for “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Bonnie Tyler’s beautiful words will appear directly in your search results. The new feature is part of a multi-year licensing deal with Toronto company LyricFind, Billboard reports, and will actually result in a new source of income for musicians and publishers.
The new lyrics cards rolled out to users in the US today, although the deal with LyricFind reportedly includes international licensing as well. While the deal terms weren’t made public, LyricFind CEO and co-founder Darryl Ballantyne thinks it will be “a significant revenue stream” that could amount to millions for music publishers and songwriters.
“It’s all based on usage,” Ballantyne told Billboard. “Royalties are paid based on the number of times a lyric is viewed. The more it’s viewed, the more publishers get paid.”
For users, this means you no longer have to click through to a third-party site to get the proper lyrics on that new Bieber song. Google, meanwhile, gets to legitimize lyrics search, which has long been dominated by bootleg sites that capture advertising revenue whether or not they are licensed to reprint the lyrics themselves. And, of course, Google will also profit from the partnership — every snippet card in search results gets a link to the full lyrics on Google Play where users can also buy the song or start a free radio station.
Google brings higher-resolution imagery to Earth and Maps
Every few months or so, Google improves the satellite imagery on services like Earth and Maps. Now, as part of its efforts to keep making the experience better for users, the search giant is going to offer higher-resolution virtual views going forward. You’ll now notice sharper imagery of areas around the world, thanks to the latest data from the Landsat 8 satellite and “new processing techniques” that Google’s implementing.
Based on one of the examples from the company (pictured below), you’re able to tell the difference right away. Everything is less blurry from afar. You can see more places for yourself on Google Earth, or by checking out the satellite option on Google Maps.
A satellite image of New York City on Google Earth. Before (above) and after (below) the update.
Source: Google
HP’s new touchscreen Chromebook is ready for Android apps
It’s no secret that HP loves making Chromebooks, and today the company is expanding its lineup with the future of Chrome OS in mind. Enter the HP Chromebook 11 G5, an 11.6-inch laptop which features a touchscreen, meaning it’ll support Android apps when Google rolls that service out later in 2016. Additionally, the new lightweight (2.51 lbs) Chromebook comes with an Intel Celeron N3060 processor and, according to HP, up to 12.5 hours of battery life. But the best part, perhaps, is that the 11 G5 will only cost $189 when it hits stores in October.
Source: HP
Google’s virtual reality field trips are available to everyone
Have you been slightly envious of kids going on Google’s virtual reality field trips? Don’t be. As part of a broader educational push, Google is making the necessary Expeditions app available to everyone. So long as you have an Android device (iOS is coming soon), you too can pay a VR visit to the Great Barrier Reef and other wonders of the world. You don’t need Cardboard or another VR viewer to make it work, but this might give you an incentive to get one.
The search firm is also putting its streaming technology to work in schools. It’s introducing a Google Cast for Education app for Chrome that lets both teachers and students share their screens. You might not use it yourself, but it’ll be a big help for classes full of Chromebooks — students won’t have to walk over to the projector just to share a project.
Source: Google Official Blog, Google Play
Google’s Project Bloks tinker toys teaches coding to kids
There has been a big push in computer science education in the last few years. The UK has made it part of its national curriculum, the President has pledged $4 billion toward a national computer science initiative, and a plethora of toys and games designed to teach kids how to code has come to market. Even Apple got into the spirit with the introduction of Swift Playgrounds, an iPad app that instructs kids on the basics of the company’s Swift programming language. Today, Google is unveiling its own big investment in computer science education. It’s called Project Bloks, an open hardware platform that anyone can use to create physical coding experiences for kids.
Project Bloks made out of three basic components: The “Brain Board,” “Base Boards” and “Pucks.” The “Brain Board” is, well, the brains of the operation. It houses the main processing unit and is built on top of a Raspberry Pi Zero. It provides power and connectivity to the whole system, and can communicate with any device that has an API through WiFi and Bluetooth. The Base Boards, on the other hand, are modular pieces that can be connected via the Brain Board to create grids or different programming flows. Each Base Board has a capacitive sensor, which it uses to receive instructions from the Pucks.
The Pucks are really the heart and soul of Project Bloks. They’re basically code instructions in physical form. Some examples of Pucks include dials, switches, arrows and buttons, which can then be programmed with instructions like “turn on and off” or “go up.” They also have no active electronic components and are therefore very inexpensive to make — they can be anything from high-end plastics to a piece of paper with conductive ink. As long as they have some kind of capacitive ID that the system can use to identify them, they can be used as Pucks. Therefore a very basic Project Bloks system will have one Brain Board connected to one or more Base Boards that are outfitted with a Puck each.
Project Bloks is a collaboration between Google’s Creative Lab division and Paulo Blikstein, the Director of Transformative Learning Technologies Lab at Stanford University. The idea is based on a concept called tangible programming, a long-held theory that kids naturally play and learn better by using their hands and by playing with each other. That’s why making the code be akin to physical blocks is pretty important.
Unfortunately, until now, tangible programming isn’t something that’s very accessible to most people. Sure there are companies that have made coding toys for kids, but they’re often quite expensive. What’s more, their functionality is often quite limited.
“You really need a lot of expertise,” explains Jayme Goldstein, the leader of the project. “You need to know electrical engineering, you need to know hardware engineering. You’ve got to spend a lot of time developing the infrastructure before you can even get to the educational design.” Goldstein says the researchers he’s spoken to often spend a couple of years just on the technical back-end. “Next is the money. There’s a lot of research and development associated with hardware, along with opportunity costs.”
But since Google has already done all of that work, all designers and developers need to do is to take that Project Bloks platform and create something from it. “What we bring to the table, is the hardware underpinnings,” says Goldstein. “It’s a system that designers, developers and researchers can use to make all kinds of physical programming experiences for kids.”
“Imagine what could happen if we had ten times more people developing ways for children to learn coding and computational thinking,” said Blikstein in a statement. “Not just the traditional way, but kits that would teach programming in different ways such as making music or controlling the physical world. That is what this platform will enable: make it easy to think outside of the box, without all the technical obstacles.”
One of the example systems that the team came up with was to have Pucks represent different musical instruments, so you could create music patterns. You could then press a Record button to get all of those patterns into a single Puck, which you could then put back into the system as an instrument. “All of a sudden, you’re learning abstraction,” says Joao Wilbert, the Tech Lead of the project. “It’s usually incredibly hard to grasp.”
“What we’ve got here is a general technology,” says Goldstein, thus setting it apart from more task-specific toys like Osmo’s Coding or Little Bits. “This system can be customized to talk to different toys. It can do far more than just moving in different directions.” It’s also very accessible and can be used even by kids who don’t have literacy skills yet. Because Project Bloks is so open-ended, you can use it with the Internet of Things — you could have it work with a Nest, for example — or anything with an Arduino. “This is a coding toy that grows up with the child,” Goldstein says.
Google worked with IDEO, an international design consultancy, to create a reference design for Project Bloks. Simply called Coding Kit, it has a Brain Board and a bunch of different Base Boards and Pucks that kids can put together to control anything from a tablet to a robot like one from Lego’s WeDo. But lest you get excited, the Coding Kit is not for sale. Instead, Google is going to use it for testing with kids and select schools. It’ll also be available for public testing at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco.
“We’ll be doing an academic paper and a research study to gather data,” says Goldstein. “The dataset is going to be made open to everyone.” He explains that developing out in the open is how Google operates. “This is a field where there is an ecosystem already. We just want to get feedback. This is just the first step.”
Google’s Sundar Pichai latest target of social media hackers
Hacking group OurMine is continuing to make some of the tech industry’s elite look more than a little silly. After a string of high-profile hacks, including recent takeovers of social media accounts belonging to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, the team appears to have successfully targeted Google CEO Sundar Pichai. A now-deleted string of tweets seems to confirm a breach of his Quora profile, which then allowed OurMine to post to Pichai’s Twitter feed thanks to the two accounts being linked.
Unlike the Zuckerberg hack, which has been put down to his use of seriously simple, common password exposed by the 2012 LinkedIn breach, OurMine claims to have found a vulnerability in Quora — a Q&A-themed social network. In a statement to The Next Web, the hacking team says it has shared details of the security hole with Quora, but hasn’t heard back.
Aside from bragging rights, OurMine looks to be targeting celebrities and big names in tech to promote its sideline as a digital security firm. Services include a probing of your social media accounts for vulnerabilities for a mere $100. Pre-paid, of course.
Via: CNET, The Next Web
Source: OurMine
Google Reportedly Working on Own-Branded Phone Set for Release This Year
Google is set to launch its own smartphone by the end of the year in an effort to compete more directly with Apple and Samsung devices, according to The Telegraph.
Citing “senior sources” familiar with the matter, the report claims that the company plans to unveil a Google-branded handset that is separate from its Nexus range of phones, which are designed and manufactured through partnerships with the likes of LG and HTC. Google is also said to be in discussions with mobile operators about the release of the phone by the end of 2016.
The Nexus 6 handset by Motorola, one of Google’s manufacturing partners.
If true, the news would be a significant shift in ambitions for the company’s mobile arm, which has historically focused on software development with its Android OS and left handset design largely in the hands of hardware manufacturers.
By contrast, Google’s own internal handset division will take full control over “design, manufacturing and software,” the newspaper reported. No other details were offered by the sources, while Google declined to comment on the story.
Last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was “investing more effort” into phones, although this was interpreted to mean it wanted to work more closely with existing Nexus device makers. Similarly, in April, Recode reported that former president of Motorola Rick Osterloh was returning to Google to take over hardware development on the company’s Nexus phones and its OEM partnerships, but no indication was given that an own-branded phone was in the works.
Google’s Android OS is used on over 1.4 billion mobile devices globally, but differences in handsets have sometimes seen the company struggle to ensure rollout consistency between software updates.
A Google-branded phone would therefore make sense from a software point of view and allow the company to control the hardware running its OS and let it showcase its other mobile software services.
Such a move however isn’t without risk. In April, the European Commission formally charged Google with monopoly abuse, accusing it of using the success of Android to unfairly push its search engine and Chrome browser on users. Not only that, much of the company’s mobile service revenue is made through iOS devices, so Apple could potentially make life hard for Google if it felt threatened by its move into mobile hardware design.
Tags: Google, Android
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Google reportedly ships its first non-Nexus phone this year
You might not have to wait long to see whether or not rumors of Google having more say over phone designs are true. Sources speaking to the Telegraph claim that Google will release a smartphone with tighter controls over “design, manufacturing and software” before the end of the year. The details of the phone aren’t available, but this wouldn’t be a Nexus from the sound of it — those are shaped more by third parties that maintain at least some of their influence. The Pixel C tablet might (might) offer an inkling of what to expect.
Google didn’t comment on the rumor for the newspaper. With that said, its leadership hasn’t been shy about wanting to take the reins. CEO Sundar Pichai recently said that Google would be more “opinionated” about designs. The issue may simply be a matter of how far Mountain View wants to go. Is it willing to risk alienating Android’s hardware partners with a phone designed largely in-house, or would this be more about making a bigger mark on the Nexus program? One thing’s certain: if the rumor is at all accurate, Google’s hardware strategy will never be the same.
Source: The Telegraph
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