Chrome for Android will let you interact with nearby smart objects
Google is bringing support for Physical Web to Chrome for Android. The feature has been available on Chrome for iOS since last summer and now Google is finally opening it up to its own platform.
What is Physical Web, you may ask. Here’s how Google describes it:
The Physical Web is an approach to unleash the core superpower of the web: interaction on demand. People should be able to walk up to any smart device – a vending machine, a poster, a toy, a bus stop, a rental car – and not have to download an app first. Everything should be just a tap away.
Explained in the most basic form, Physical Web means objects can broadcast via Bluetooth an URL to every device in its range. When a phone running Chrome detects the URL, the user can open up the web site or web app behind the URL with just a tap.
Taking one of Google’s examples, you could have a Physical Web-equipped bus station that broadcasts the URL of the bus timetable. Just walk nearby it and a notification will let you consult it.
With this explanation out of the way, the ability to detect URLs that are broadcasted by nearby Physical Web devices is coming to Chrome 49 for Android beta. A notification will be displayed the first time the device encounters a Physical Web device. After the user enables the feature, URLs will show up as notifications.
Think of Physical Web as a way to tie real world objects with the web. It’s all part of the greater IoT trend, that is slowly, but surely, changing every industry it touches.
It’s safe to say that, at least in the beginning, Physical Web will be used by companies looking to sell you stuff. In a 21st century version of street vendors hawking their wares, stores could soon send you notifications every time you walk past them at the mall. Provided you choose to accept them, of course.
Incessant ads aside, the possibilities that are opened by Physical Web are endless, and the fact that Google is baking support for this standard in the most popular browser in the world will only accelerate its adoption.
Chrome on Android communicates with smart devices around you
Folks running Chrome on iOS have had a chance to tap into the Physical Web devices around them since last July, but Google’s finally opened that functionality up to its own ecosystem. To that end, Chrome 49 on Android will support the objects (like parking meters, for instance). The first time you encounter one there will be a push notification alerting you one is nearby, and future run-ins will populate a list of the gadgets nearby. It’s starting in the beta channel, a post on the Chromium Blog notes, with wider support rolling out soon. In case you’re curious of how it all looks in action, the GIF below should give you a good idea.
Mountain View says that some 1,500 of these beacons were in place during CES this year as well, helping folks around the various exhibits on the floor. Fingers crossed that next year they’ll identify the closest hand sanitizer station too.
Source: Chromium Blog
Google Forms has been updated to include templates, add-ons, and more
Those who use Google Forms will be happy to learn there is a pretty major update out. Google has added many new features from templates, analyzing surveys, quizzes and event sign-up, and more.
Templates can now be selected for standard surveys such as customer feedback, and quizzes and event sign-up all from the home screen on Google Forms. Now you no longer have to start from the beginning when creating a new form. The templates should make things much easier and faster as you can simply select which one you want from the start.
Add-ons is another new addition. You can now use a few third-party tools such as Form Publisher, Choice Eliminator, and g(Math) for Form directly from Forms.
I’m sure many people will be happy to hear that Google has added a few new ways of analyzing surveys. Anyone who uses Google Apps for Work and Education will now be able to see who responded to a survey. If you see someone has “forgotten” to respond, you can simply use the “send reminder email” feature to quickly remind them again.
Source: Google Docs (Twitter)
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Google announces People API, moves further away from Google+
Google has announced a new People API for Android to help apps gather information from your contacts list, which is meant to eventually replace the current Contacts API and move away from using Google+ to glean connections about a user. This is an interesting move compared to Google’s direction just a few years ago when the company was bent on forcing everything through the social media portion of their services, and really shows that Google has changed focus from Google+ back to multiple services, like Photos and Hangouts.
The new API gives developers an easy way to grab contacts and all of their linked connections and profiles, if a user grants permission. This API seems a little more focused on streamlining things and keeping that info secure and private, which is never a bad thing.
If you’re interested in looking over the documentation for the API or implementing it yourself, you can follow the links below to Google’s developer site.
source: Android Developers
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Google’s killing off Flash-based advertising
Google has announced that its Google Display Network and DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DCDM) platforms will begin phasing out the use of Flash ads starting June 30th. From the start of July through the end of the year, advertisers will no longer be able to upload Flash ads into AdWords or DCDM. And, starting January 2nd, 2017, any existing Flash ads will cease to function on any of Google’s ad networks. This only applies to static ads, mind you. Flash-based video ads will not be affected.
This move comes as the entire industry slowly migrates away from Flash in general. The player software has long been maligned for being laughably insecure. Chrome already started blocking some Flash-based ads last September, Firefox has vowed to eliminate support for the format by the end of 2016, and even Adobe has tried to distance itself by renaming its Flash Professional app.
Source: Google
Google will make it easier to be ‘forgotten’ online in Europe
Google has been complying with the European Union’s “right to be forgotten” laws for nearly two years now, but it hasn’t always been easy. Up until this point, Google has been reviewing and potentially removing information related to a search for a person’s name that appears to be “inadequate or irrelevant.” But thus far, it’s only been removing those results from the search engine in the country that the request originated from — for example, Google.fr search results would omit information for a French citizen’s request, but the data could still be found on Google.com.
Now, it appears that Google’s changing that behavior. According to a report from Reuters, those search results will be removed from all Google pages — assuming the person is doing the searching in the country in question. Continuing with the earlier example, if a French citizen successfully has his information removed from Google, it won’t matter what version of the company’s search engine is being used, so long as the search originates in France.
When this change will go into effect remains to be seen, but Reuters’ source claims that Google has already notified all of the EU data protection authorities that this change will be forthcoming soon. It’s just the latest development in Google’s struggle to meet the EU’s ruling — the company has already had to review hundreds of thousands of requests, with total links numbering in the millions, and it’s been under fire for making some wrong decisions regarding whether or not to honor the requests. This new change might not help Google be any more accurate, but it will make those requests it grants less visible, which will almost surely be seen as a good thing in the EU’s eyes.
Source: Reuters
Valve’s VR technology now works with the Unity game engine
For many gaming platforms, the litmus test these days is whether or not they get official support in Unity’s game engine — land that and many developers (and by extension, gamers) are likely to give them a closer look. Valve just got a big credibility boost, then, as Unity is introducing native SteamVR support. If a virtual reality game runs on Unity’s seemingly ubiquitous code, it’s that much more likely to work with the HTC Vive and other SteamVR-friendly headsets. And much like the Unreal Engine, teams can edit in VR if they want to know what a scene will look like for players.
Valve’s not the only one giving Unity the thumbs-up, either. Unity is also adding support for Google Cardboard support, letting devs make VR experiences that won’t cost you or them a lot of money. Both Google and Valve are a bit late to the party — Oculus Rift support has been there for a while. Nonetheless, this is heartening news if you were concerned that game studios wouldn’t show SteamVR enough affection.
Footage of editing in VR. @unity3d #VisionSummit2016 #vr #virtualreality #womeninvr pic.twitter.com/sfEHVzkMD5
— Jenn Duong (@jenndefer) February 10, 2016
Via: Jenn Duong (Twitter 1), (2), (3)
Source: Unity
75 HD wallpapers from your favorite video games
Many of you are video game enthusiasts and we have collected 75 HD and QHD wallpapers from your favorite video games, from Call of Duty to Super Mario Brothers we have you covered.
We’ve changed things up lately and will be sharing the entire collection through Google Photos rather than hosting them on our servers. There are thousands of you who love these wallpapers and rather than drain the speed on our server, we’re offloading that responsibility to Google. All you have to do is join the collection through this link and you’re free to download all of the wallpapers to your device.
We would also love it if you tweeted screenshots of your home screens to us at Twitter.com (@AndroidGuys). We might feature your background in an upcoming wallpapers collection!
See the entire collection by clicking on this LINK to Google Photos.
Here some of our favorites from the collection.
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‘Final Fantasy IX’ is now on iOS and Android
You could argue that Final Fantasy IX is the long-running series’ high point. It’s certainly the highest-rated Final Fantasy game on Metacritic, even if its sales and nostalgic value pale in comparison to Final Fantasy VII. Putting that argument aside for a moment, it’s easy to say that it’s definitely a game worth playing if you like JRPGs. And now — less than two months after it was announced — it’s available on iOS and Android. The bar for entry has never been lower.
The mobile port includes “high-definition movies and character models,” autosave, achievements and a collection of “game boosters” that let you essentially cheat your way through the game. You can speed up time, cut out random encounters or hit every enemy for 9,999 damage. The idea of the boosters is to make the game, which in its original incarnation involved well over a full day’s worth of grinding, more playable for casual gamers.
If grinding on a phone or tablet isn’t your thing — or you don’t have a phone with the necessary 8GB of free space to install it — Final Fantasy IX will also be coming to Steam in “Early 2016,” together with the enhancements mentioned above and some Steam trading cards.
Via: Kotaku
Source: Square Enix (Google Play), (App Store)
Adobe’s Flash gets closer to the pan with Google advertising change
The slow death of Adobe’s Flash technology received another nail in the coffin after Google announced they are starting the process of phasing out the use of Flash in display ads. The change will impact advertising provided through Google’s AdWords platform and their DoubleClick Digital Marketing. Google announced both platforms will move to being 100% HTML5 by January 2017.
The process of removing Flash built ads will officially start on June 30, 2016 when Google will stop allowing the uploading of Flash ads to either of the affected advertising networks. Following that move, on January 2, 2017 Google will no longer allow Flash format ads to run on the Google Display Network or the DoubleClick platform.
If there is any glimmer of hope for Flash fans it is that video ads built in Flash will “not be impacted at this time.” Google’s wording seems to indicate the days are numbered for Flash based video ads as well.
Google, and many others, have slowly but surely been moving away from the Flash format for several years now, opting instead for HTML5. The death of Flash has been driven largely by security problems present with the technology as new vulnerabilities continue to pop up on a regular basis. In addition, Adobe themselves did the platform no favors when they announced in 2011 that they were no longer going to support the Flash Player for mobile devices.
This is not Google’s first move with regard to transitioning Flash to HTML5. In January 2015 the tech giant started converting YouTube videos from Flash to HTML5. Besides the improved security, the use of HTML5 opens up content to more devices, notably mobile devices.
source: AdWords (Google+)
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