Google’s iOS keyboard is the GIF and emoji app of my dreams
I just deleted the Giphy app from my iPhone. This is notable because I adore GIFs. I find a deep, slightly perverse, pleasure in sending texts full of those little moving pictures to my loved ones, and the Giphy app streamlined my image-hunting process tenfold. But now, it’s gone from my home screen, deleted forever because I found something that makes texting with GIFs even easier. I found Gboard.
Let’s not get melodramatic here: Gboard is simply Google’s new iOS keyboard. It’s not an app that will change your life or make your surly traditionalist uncle see the true value of technology, but it’s a welcome addition to my own texting routine. Gboard features Google search right in the keyboard, plus the ability to hunt for emoji by name. There’s also the Glide Typing swipeable keyboard and, of course, GIF search.
The embedded Google search function is ridiculously handy. It brings browser searching straight to the keyboard, eliminating the process of closing the texting app, opening a browser, copying a link, closing the browser and finally pasting the information into a message. Instead, tap the G icon in the upper left corner of the keyboard and search right there for anything on the web, including weather reports, addresses, flight information and nearby cat cafes (hey, we said anything). Search results pop up in a single row of clickable cards; tap one and its headline and URL automatically populate in your message. If you want to add the actual card, just tap the card, tap the message field, hit “Paste” and voila!
Once you’ve searched for something, you’re able to toggle among web, image and GIF results via three icons under the row of cards. To add an image or GIF, tap the card you want and it’s automatically ready to be pasted, either as a boring static picture or a gloriously mobile, extra-short narrative experience. (Have I mentioned how much I love GIFs?)
But, that’s not the only way Gboard can add GIFs to texts. A small smiley face to the left of the spacebar brings up the standard iOS selection of emoji, plus the option to toggle to GIF search. Hit the “GIF” icon under those yellow smiley faces and search for whatever moving picture you’d like, or browse suggested searches such as “high five,” “thumbs up,” “shrug” and “mic drop.”
Even emoji are searchable in Gboard in a pleasantly natural way. Most icons seem to respond to a variety of terms — for example, searching for “Halloween” brings up a jack-o-lantern. The search even works with some misspellings and inaccurate predicted text. Not using the swipeable keyboard, I searched for “Halloweeb” and still received the happy little pumpkin, while “jack” brought up the pumpkin and the Union Jack. Using the swipeable keyboard, I accidentally searched for “punishing” and received a row of fists — and a jack-o-lantern at the very end.
Emoji search is a wonderful addition to my texting life, since I find scrolling through rows of vaguely sorted icons to be time-consuming and frustrating. Plus, Gboard suggests emoji even when you’re composing a text-only message. For example, I started asking my boyfriend if he wanted to get a burrito for lunch and the first suggested “word” under the message was the burrito emoji. We also messaged each other about butts for a while, which is when I realized the peach emoji actually represents a booty, not a vagina. The more you know, indeed.
Overall, the Glide Typing function is suitably responsive (this isn’t the first swipeable keyboard for iOS, after all), though I have to make sure the nail on my thumb doesn’t interfere with my actual swiping.
Gboard makes a lot of sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if it became the standard for keyboards in the near future — it’s a welcome upgrade based on how people actually send text messages. And GIFs. We can’t forget the GIFs.
Everything you love will die, especially in tech
A little over a year ago, Microsoft bought beloved calendar app Sunrise. For the past 14 months or so, things have been more or less business as usual… at least for customers. But this week, the other shoe finally dropped: August 31st will be the last day that Sunrise exists as a standalone app. Sure, you could use Outlook, which by now shares some of the same DNA, but it’ll never be the same. Indeed, some of us here at Engadget are pretty heartbroken about it. Which got us thinking about all of the other apps and services that we loved and relied on that ended up being unceremoniously shuttered.
Sunrise
My life runs on Google Calendar. I use it everyday, not just for work meetings, but also to manage my personal life — everything from my gym schedule, hair appointments and dinners out with friends. But for years now, I’ve been unable to make Google Calendar play nice on my iPhone. The default iOS calendar just doesn’t seem to work with all of Google’s multiple shared calendars. This is especially true of the calendars we have on our corporate Google Apps account, which wouldn’t show up at all. A few years ago, someone suggested Sunrise to me as an alternative. And my life was saved.
Sunrise was beautiful. The UI made so much more sense. I loved the ability to just look at the week’s calendar at a glance, and I loved that I could integrate my personal and work calendars in a single interface. Sunrise really was the perfect Google Calendar app for me. What’s more, because Sunrise also worked on Android and the desktop, I could switch up my devices and still keep all my settings. Oh, and the integration with Google Maps was a godsend; it saved me from getting lost several times.
So when I heard Sunrise would be going away, my heart shattered. I know, it’s now been phased into the new Outlook app, but it just doesn’t look the same. I could also just use the recently launched Google Calendar app, but I find it sluggish (it takes forever for my calendars to sync) and the design is garish. It feels weird to say this about a calendar app, but Sunrise will be hard to replace. It was one of the few reliable constants in my life. I guess I’ll just have to make do with the default apps for now.
-Nicole Lee, Senior Editor
Hopstop
Why did Apple have to buy Hopstop? Don’t answer that. I know why they did: to help make their crappy maps app better. But man, what a shame. I first heard about Hopstop, the website offering subway directions, back in 2006 — a time when the web itself was still quaintly referred to as “new media.” Even as a lifelong New Yorker, I found the site useful: Though I have a good idea of which lines cover which areas, I haven’t committed the exact schedules to memory, nor am I always aware of service disruptions. Even now, I need something like this to figure out exactly how late I can sleep in on a Monday morning and still make the subway for my 6:30am workout class. (Hashtag humblebrag.) Obviously too, I need subway directions when I’m traveling strange cities, though back in 2006, Hopstop’s selection was admittedly more limited.
After Apple bought the service in 2013, I could no longer use the app on my Moto X. The standalone website has been shut down too, which is a bummer when I’m using a desktop machine. (Using Maps for OS X is annoying, since it’s slow to recalculate my route when I plug in custom arrival or departure times.) I’ve since switched to the iPhone 6, but even now, there’s no standalone app; just Apple Maps, with transit directions built in. That’s a shame, because even after all the improvements Apple has made to its once-terrible maps program, it’s still not my go-to. Worse still, the transit directions in Apple Maps seem to offer less detailed information than I was accustomed to in Hopstop proper, especially where train timetables are concerned.
Fortunately, as a famous man once said, good artists copy, and great artists steal. Today, in the year 2016, Google Maps has detailed transit directions of its own — and I don’t need an Android phone to access them.
-Dana Wollman, Managing Editor
Glitch
Most of the staff here at Engadget was pretty pleased when we switched to Slack for our work chats. It has so many features baked in that I’m not sure that any of us could ever go back. And yet, there are moments where I’m nostalgic for a world without Slack, because it would mean we’d still have Glitch. Glitch was a browser-based MMORPG that eschewed combat in favor of exploration, crafting and just generally being a nice person. It made mundane tasks like mining and farming irresistibly adorable.
It was also super weird: You were living inside a giant’s brain. But there was a subway. And you could milk butterflies. You got butter by shaking the milk. Eventually you’d get cheese? Don’t ask me to make sense of the game’s world or mechanics; I just enjoyed wandering around planting and harvesting crops, shaking chickens for grain and just amassing massive piles of odd virtual crap. Alas, it wasn’t exactly the sort of runaway success developer Tiny Speck needed to stay afloat. So, it shut the game down and shifted its focus to a chat program the team created while developing Glitch. And, given how well Slack has worked out I don’t blame the company at all. But man, there are times when I really, really miss milking butterflies.
-Kris Naudus, Senior Database Editor
Google Reader
Nary a day goes by that I don’t mourn the loss of my beloved Google Reader. Sure, there are countless alternatives with annoyingly similar names — Digg Reader, AOL Reader, Inoreader, Old Reader, (just) Reeder — but none of them have really captured my heart the way Google’s RSS app did. There was something elegant about its simplicity. It was reliable, fast and made it easy to keep up on the hundreds of sites in my feeds (at its peak, somewhere around 480). I knew all the keyboard shortcuts by heart and could plow through thousands of articles, opening the interesting ones to read later in a background tab, in mere minutes. It was all just muscle memory.
But, Google didn’t love Reader the way I (or the rest of its fans) did. In July 2013 it died for good. In the aftermath those previously mentioned alternatives scrambled to pick up the pieces. I took my business to Feedly, but honestly it’s never felt like more than a rebound. I could never love it the way I loved Google Reader. It left me out in the cold and I’ve never really gotten over it.
-Terrence O’Brien, Managing Editor
Carousel
I loved Dropbox’s Carousel. Its auto-upload function spirited my photos from my phone once I connected to WiFi, and the app interface had a tantalizing dial that you used to literally roll back in time through your photos. It was far more visually appealing than the original Dropbox photo upload option — and so very scrollable. I already paid for plenty of storage and often used the app for work-based photo sharing. This just brought my world of ramen photography and karaoke videos into the same cloud space.
Long before Facebook made flashback pics a plague on all of our newsfeeds, Carousel would corral weekly selections of your snapshots from yesteryear. It launched on Android and iOS in September 2014 but, by mid 2015, Dropbox was already planning a funeral. The company said it was putting its energy into sharing and collaboration features in the primary app, as well as newer work collaboration-based apps like Paper. Dropbox could have left Carousel to stand on its own. It was less serious, less business-y than the company’s main app.
Whatever Dropbox’s reasons for ending the photosharing fun-fair, there’s was one rival that probably made the decision to pull the plug easier: Google Photos.
It offered free unlimited (with strings attached) photo storage, automagically backed up photos to your Google account, and crammed in a ton of sharing features that were easy to access — even on an iPhone.
Basically, it became a better Carousel. It pulled in geotag data, face recognition and other machine learning tricks to group your photos together. It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty on-point. I didn’t have to scroll through my iPhone camera roll to find pics of my reclusive brother, Google Photo automatically pulled them all together. It would also auto-create gifs of burst photo sets.
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. Well, Carousel was flattered to death.
-Mat Smith, Senior Editor
YouTube will offer classic NFL games as part of a new deal
The National Football League and YouTube have expanded a deal that allows the site to play previews, highlights and recaps. In 2016, YouTube will not only carry more content and expand its search options, but also show entire classic games. “Three of the most memorable games for each of the 32 clubs in the NFL will be posted to the NFL’s official channel on YouTube prior to the start of the 2016 season,” according to the NFL’s blog. In other words, the site will soon host dozens of vintage matches.
The deal has been a success so far, with over 900 million views to date. On top of the classic games, more content will be available overall on YouTube, including in-progress highlights uploaded during games. In addition, Google searches will be expanded so that users see more “official NFL video along with related news and information, all delivered to the user in one distinct box at the top of the search results,” says the league.
The NFL and Google reportedly split ad revenue from the videos, but the league is also using the relationship to build loyalty from fans with “an insatiable appetite for NFL digital video content online.” However, those viewers won’t be turning to YouTube if they want free, live streaming. Instead, they’ll flip over to Twitter, which cemeted its own pact with the league to broadcast all of the 2016 Thursday Night Football games for free. Facebook was also in the running to carry those tilts, but reportedly passed.
Source: NFL
Google is hiring autonomous car testers in Arizona
If you’re in Arizona, Google is hiring for a gig that could be a good alternative to doing Uber. The job entails test driving an autonomous car around the state for $20 an hour, six to eight hours a day. You’ll still need to know how to actually drive to be able to take the wheel if needed. But since your role is testing out the big G’s new technology, you’re expected to provide the engineering team “concise written and oral feedback,” submit daily reports and document any test or procedure performed.
That’s why even though Google isn’t looking for any “particular type of person,” it wants people with bachelor’s degrees and excellent communication skills. If you’re applying because you want to go on a road trip inside one of Google’s compact cars, though, we’re afraid you’d be sorely disappointed. You’ll be testing the tech titan’s self-driving technology on a Lexus like the one in the image above.
Via: The Verge
Source: The Arizona Republic, HireArt
‘Android VR’ confirmed by Google developer site
It looks nearly certain that Google will launch an Android-powered VR headset that works without a phone or PC. Android Police spotted an “Android VR” placeholder in Google’s Play Developer Console, and Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas (now an entrepreneur at investment firm Betaworks) tweeted that “Android VR will be definitely be announced next week” (at Google I/O). Rojas added that the device will be a “standalone” headset that doesn’t require a phone, and will obviously be less powerful than the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift models that are tethered to a PC.
The rumors jibe with an earlier report that Google will release a standalone headset. The company may use motion-tracking cameras powered by Movidius, a company it worked with on the Project Tango smartphone. However, the Financial Times also reported that Google will launch a device that does require a smartphone, but supports multiple brands, unlike Samsung’s Gear VR. According to the WSJ, it may launch both types of models at its I/O conference.
Android VR will definitely be announced next week, and from what I’ve heard will be less powerful than the Vive or Rift.
— Peter Rojas (@peterrojas) May 11, 2016
Neither type of headset requires third-party apps, because the Android VR experience will supposedly be built right into Android. That would differ from Google’s Cardboard or the Gear VR, which requires Oculus software to run. The latter headset is the one most people think of for smartphone VR, as Samsung cannily jumped on the tech as a way to promote its high-end smartphones. Thanks to a giveaway promo with the S7 model and a cheap $100 price, over a million users now own one.
A lot of folks (including me) bought a Galaxy phone just to get the Gear VR, so if Google launches a wearable and ecosystem that supports more smartphones, Samsung and Oculus will lose their “monopoly.” It seems likely that Android VR will be baked into the upcoming Android N operating system, so it could take a while before you can buy these theoretical headsets. If accurate, however, the products will stoke a ton of interest for Google’s I/O conference, which Engadget will be covering extensively from May 18-20. (That’s next week!)
Source: Android Police, Peter Rojas (Twitter)
Google makes its most powerful language parser open source
The days of us communicating with our computers by using our fingers are nearing an end. Google announced on Thursday that it is releasing its language parsing neural network framework, SyntaxNet, as an open source system. The released code includes everything you need to train it using your own data set, though Google is also releasing a version already fluent in English: Parsey McParseface.
These programs, like other language parsers, form the basis of Natural Language Understanding (NLU) systems. Parsers are what allow applications like Google Now and Siri to understand the words you are either speaking or typing, label each word by its syntax and then discern your intent from what you’ve said/typed. The problem is, sentences become more complex and harder to decipher the longer they are. A sentence comprised of just 20 words may have hundreds of different syntax interpretations. Luckily, Parsey McParseyface is ranked as the most accurate parsing model currently available with a comprehension accuracy of about 95 percent.
Source: Google Research
TripIt puts travel on your wrist with Android Wear app
TripIt’s already given its mobile app a sleek overhaul for Apple’s iOS and now it’s Android’s turn. The travel app’s been updated to give users of Google-powered devices, including Android Wear enthusiasts, a cleaner layout and more helpful planning options. Now, the jet set can check-in for flights directly from the app, monitor a departures countdown timer, arrange for ground transportation and parking reservations, and even navigate using improved maps. The company’s also also added the ability to merge related trips so you can easily keep track of your country-hopping. It’s travel 21st century-style and it’s available on your wrist.
Source: TripIt
Evernote adds image previews and search for Google Drive files
For many, Evernote is a useful productivity tool for notes, lists and more. Today, the company announced integration with Google Drive that allows you to drop in files instead of simply linking to them. As part of the new feature, those Drive files will show up as linked thumbnails and any images will display a preview. What’s more, you can search Drive from Evernote and any changes made to documents or other files that are stored in the cloud will sync to your notes as well.
Google is making a habit of giving third-party apps access to Drive in the interest of productivity. Last month, the company announced that Yahoo Mail and WhatsApp users could drop in files from the cloud-based repository inside the respective iOS and Android apps. Right now, this latest Google Drive integration is available in beta on the web and Evernote’s Android app with other platforms coming soon.
Source: Google Drive, Evernote
Google Again Surpasses Apple as Most Valuable Company in the World
With Apple shares dipping below $90 this morning, Google’s parent company Alphabet briefly overtook Apple as the world’s most valuable company hitting a market cap of $498 billion compared to Apple’s market cap of $494 billion. Apple and Google shares continue to fluctuate and the two companies are neck-and-neck for the top valuation, but Google remains in the lead.
Apple’s stock has seen steep declines in recent weeks, following its first ever drop in iPhone sales and its first year-over-year revenue decline since 2003. Apple’s share price is down again amid rumors of weak demand for the upcoming iPhone 7 and there’s no relief in sight as Apple is also expecting a revenue drop in Q3 2016.
Apple’s guidance for the quarter includes expected revenue of $41 to $43 billion and gross margin between 37.5 and 38 percent, compared to $49.6 billion revenue and gross margin of 39.7 percent in Q3 2015.
Google parent company Alphabet previously overtook Apple as the most valuable company in the world in February of 2016 following a strong Q1 2016 earnings report.
Earlier today, Apple was ranked the world’s most valuable brand by Forbes, assigned a brand value of $154.1 billion compared to Google’s $82.5 billion.
Tags: Google, AAPL, Alphabet
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Google puts search, GIFs and more inside its new iOS keyboard
Although Google has plenty of iOS apps, switching between them to share directions or perform a web search can be time-consuming. The company knows that the iPhone keyboard is where you spend a lot of your time, so it’s decided to launch fresh take on Apple’s default option. It’s called Gboard and it can search the web, embed GIFs, locate the perfect emoji and grab weather reports. It will also help send restaurant information, flight times and news articles to friends and family. “Anything you’d search on Google, you can search with Gboard,” says Rajan Patel, Principal Engineer at Google.
Let’s talk more about that emoji picker. Apple’s standard keyboard lists hundreds of tiny images, but locating the fire emoji can prove frustrating unless you know which section it resides in (it’s in Animals & Nature, by the way). Simply search for the keyword that best describes it and Gboard should instantly find it. Another really useful feature is the ability to pull up a Google search from the big “G” button positioned on the top left corner of the keyboard. Hit the button, search for whatever you want to send and attach it as a card without having to leave your conversation.
While swipeable keyboards have been available on iOS for some time now, Gboard introduces support for Google’s Glide Typing, which lets you slide your finger between keys to input text with tiny gestures. The company says Gboard will launch in the US first, but it will come to more regions (and support more languages) soon. Also, with Google I/O just around the corner, it would be safe to assume that Android users won’t have to wait long to get a taste of Gboard’s features too.
Via: Google Blog
Source: Gboard (App Store)
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