Google Creates A Real-Life "Easy Button" That Can Do Anything With A Tap I never understood why anyone would want a smart watch--another silly screen strapped to their wrist. Then I saw what Google had built with its Android Wear platform--the underlying software behind everything from Google smart watches to Google Glass headsets. The company has created a universal “easy button” for your life, one blue button that can empower a million different actions in a million different contexts. How It Works Android Wear beams notifications from your phone to the gadget on your face or wrist. What does that mean? In new updates to Android, this notification can have buttons on it. Convenience In Context I caught up with Brett Lider, a senior UX designer on the Android Wear team. For example, OpenTable could offer you a button to “enter queue” when waiting outside a restaurant. On Google Glass, the interaction has the potential to be even more powerful. Have a problem? [Image: Abstract via Shutterstock]
Google Is About To Take Over Your Whole Life, And You Won't Even Notice “I have a weird question for you,” I stammered, sitting in a hotel room across from Matias Duarte and Jon Wiley, the design leads for Google Android and Search, respectively. As a reporter, you tend to ask a lot of stupid sounding questions, and it’s generally no big deal. But I was about to ask an extremely stupid sounding question--the type of question that, just by breathing it into the air, might out me as actually stupid, tainting every future conversation we’d have to come. “What is Google?” Yes, It's A Lot Of Services The question may have been stupid, yes, but it was apropos. With Material Design, Google has become a second reality inside touchscreen devices--complete with its own rules of logic and physics--and if Google has its way, it will eventually break free of touchscreens to quite literally reshape the world around us. “When you make things, you inherit thousands of years of expertise. In reality, all of these notions of Google are true. Luckily it's not all work.
Google Promotes Open Standards to Advance Internet of Things tech in the spotlight Posted by Sheila Shayon on December 17, 2014 04:04 PM Google is reaching out to the academic community to submit proposals for an Internet of Things (IoT) open standards program to be called the 'Open Web of Things.' The initiative’s goals are to further the development of open standards, facilitate ease of use and ensure that privacy and security are fundamental values in the evolution of the IoT. "Imagine a world in which access to networked technology defies the constraints of desktops, laptops or smartphones," blogged Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist, along with Roy Want and Max Senges of Google Research. "A future where we work seamlessly with connected systems, services, devices and 'things' to support work practices, education, and daily interactions." To that end, Google is offering two options: Submissions are due by Jan. 21, and proposals will be selected in the early spring.
Welcome to Google Island | Gadget Lab Google IO attendees visit Google’s virtual island Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired I awoke aboard a boat, just before daybreak, which was weird. The last thing I remembered was being in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, wrapping up a four-hour Google I/O keynote liveblogging session. My last recollection was of Google CEO Larry Page taking questions from the audience and promoting a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms. “I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out,” he had said. I realized I was the only one aboard, and the boat was driving itself. It hit the shore at first light, approaching from a perfect angle that allowed the sun to just peek out over the back of the island. “Hello.” The soft, froggy voice startled me. “Welcome to Google Island. I was taken aback. I was thirsty, so I drank the electrolyte solution down. “Don’t worry.
3 Future Google Projects That Will Change Your Life Twitter49 Facebook82 LinkedIn43 Google Plus21 It seems like a fairytale story few are capable of conjuring, or a creation plucked straight from an X-Men movie, but the giant behemoth Google maintains a low-profile research lab known as Google[x] just half a mile away from its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California. What distinguishes Google[x] from other regional labs? Your future. Astro Teller, Director of Google[x] Products, stated “when we come up against things we can’t forecast, we assume if we can’t imagine it, it isn’t possible.” For a company that abides by its informal motto, “Don’t be evil,” Google’s vision seems limitless and indefinable by the nature of its scope. Yes. Google[x] labs has been “cooking” new projects with attainable scopes that could rapidly and dynamically set the precedent for an evolutionary jump in technology, energy, and communication. Without further ado, let’s look in our crystal ball and review three upcoming Google projects. Project Loon
Can We All Just Admit Google Is An Evil Empire? Google is kicking off 2014 with some good old-fashioned privacy infringement. The search giant’s recent decision to link Gmail addresses to Google+ was met with considerable backlash among users who don't want their inboxes exposed to spam. But according to former Tumblr lead developer Marco Arment on his blog, we really shouldn’t be surprised at all: To be clear, for anyone who thinks Google is some benevolent, selfless entity handing out free services to everyone out of the goodness of its heart: Google’s leadership, threatened by the attention and advertising relevance of Facebook, is betting the company on Google+ at all costs. To that end, writes Arment, Google will do anything up to and including angering the users of its core products and services if that meant propping up Google+ against Facebook’s overwhelming dominance. In a 2012 article for TechCrunch, writer Josh Constine argued that Google stopped caring about whether or not people used Google+ fairly early on.
How to use search like a pro: 10 tips and tricks for Google and beyond | Tech... Search engines are pretty good at finding what you’re looking for these days, but sometimes they still come up short. For those occasions there are a few little known tricks which come in handy. So here are some tips for better googling (as it’s the most popular search engine) but many will work on other search engines too. 1. The simplest and most effective way to search for something specific is to use quote marks around a phrase or name to search for those exact words in that exact order. For instance, searching for Joe Bloggs will show results with both Joe and Bloggs but not necessarily placed sequentially. The exact or explicit phrase search is very useful for excluding more common but less relevant results. 2. If exact phrase doesn’t get you what you need, you can specifically exclude certain words using the minus symbol. A search for “Joe Bloggs” -jeans will find results for Joe Bloggs, but it will exclude those results for the Joe Bloggs brand of jeans. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Google Docs: Default to Anyone With the Link Can View I was talking with a teacher who was wishing that it was possible to have Google Docs default to “Anyone with the link can view.” This would ensure that when he shares resources that viewers are not told that the document is private and they do not have access. If you set the sharing settings on a folder then any documents in the folder inherit the same sharing settings. In Google Drive create a folder that you will share resources from. Click on the folder in Google Drive. Click on the word “Advanced” in the bottom right hand corner of the sharing screen. Click on the word “Change” to change the sharing settings away from private. Choose the option for “Anyone with the link” and leave the default for “can view” down at the bottom. When creating a new document go to the folder first. This trick also works for teams. Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015 Like this: Like Loading...