Screen Shot 2013-05-02 at 12.53.27

Google Glass: Take Photos With a Wink

I just released Winky, a way to take pictures with a wink on Google glass. This was a fun project that involved a bit of decompiling of GlassHome to see what was going on. I discovered a few other interesting tidbits that I’ll be looking into as I get time.

Winking really changes things. You might not think it’s hard to say “Ok, Glass Take a Picture” or even just tap a button. But it’s a context switch that takes you out of the moment, even if just for a second. Winking lets you lifelog with little to no effort. I’ve taken more pictures today than I have the past 5 days thanks to this. Sure, they are mostly silly, but my timeline has now truly become a timeline of where I’ve been.

Read more

google-glass

Human Body: The Next Computer Interface

The new language will be ultra subtle and totally intuitive, building not on crude body movements but on subtle expressions and micro-gestures.

Think about this scenario: You see someone at a party you like; his social profile is immediately projected onto your retina via Google Glass: Great, a 92% match. By staring at him for two seconds, you trigger a pairing protocol. He knows you want to pair, because you are now glowing slightly red in his retina screen. Then you slide your tongue over your left incisor and press gently. This makes his left incisor tingle slightly. He responds by touching it. The pairing protocol is completed.

After seeing Google Glass having minimal or none design: What will be the role of the designer when there is no interface left to design: Will they become choreographers and storytellers instead? Or will they disappear from the landscape entirely, to be replaced by algorithmic processes, artificial intelligence and gene sequencing?

Read the article

 

Screen Shot 2013-04-08 at 18.57.36

Google buys Whatsapp?

The war between tech and networking giants is getting interesting with social networking and messaging apps acquisitions entering the fray. With Facebook acquiring the photo-sharing app Instagram it was only time before eyes turned to the biggest thing in social messaging – Whatsapp.

While reports state that both; Google and Facebook were vying for a Whatsapp buyout, Google seems to be getting the upper hand. Google executives have been in talks with Whatsapp over the past few weeks and Whatsapp has been valued at one billion dollars by the search giant.

Screen Shot 2013-03-21 at 22.32.10

Google Keep is here

Google Keep will allow users to keep checklists and voice notes and annotate photos.

It will compete with apps such as Evernote in the growing digital memo market.

Evernote currently has 15 million active users, while Microsoft offers a similar service called OneNote.

chrome_60-100004287-gallery

Google Chromebooks Coming to Six New Countries

Google‘s Chromebooks from HP, Acer and Samsung will become available in six new countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands, Google has announced.

The rollout, which will start Tuesday, will also include Chromebooks for schools and businesses. Google will organize a Hangout for each new country the Chromebooks are available in, explaining how Chromebooks can be used in education. The time schedule for the Hangouts is available here.

Furthermore, Chromebooks will become available in more than 1,000 new Best Buy stores in the U.S. over the next couple of weeks.

Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 09.07.33

Google Reader for Feedly

The news that Google is shutting down Google Reader on July 1 of this year shook the Internet to its core this week. For many, it is the go-to feed aggregator that made looking deep into the heart of the online world possible from one window, and the news of its demise has us wondering what we’ll do next. What next? How about dumping Google Reader and switching to Feedly? In fact, a half-million people already switched in only two days.

Having a sudden influx of 500,000 new users can be a lot to handle for any site, but Feedly seems willing to meet the challenges needed to greet lost Googlers with open arms. In a blog post, a Feedly blogger said the company is committed to keeping the site up and running despite the big jump in numbers.

Feedly isn’t content to continue existing while hundreds of thousands of new users flock to its shores. The Feedly blog also said the company is committed to adding new features, and to taking suggestions from new users about what they would like those features to be. Our guess for the number one suggestion Feedly is likely see from from Google Reader users? “Make this more like Google Reader.”

I gave into peer pressure and signed up for Feedly. All my Google Reader info transferred over nicely without much effort on my part. The only problem I’ve noticed is that my lists of sites are out of order for some reason, and I’m having trouble rearranging them in Feedly. That’s minor, and it’s not the kind of thing people do all the time, so I’m willing to live with a little frustration.

The major difference I’ve noticed between Reader and Feedly is that Feedly is beautiful, which actually doesn’t help it at all. We don’t use an RSS reader because we want a beautiful layout — we use an RSS reader to see the most Internet in a single sitting as possible. Feedly offers a few featured articles at the top of each page, but I’d rather just get right to a list of headlines I can skim through.

Screen Shot 2013-03-14 at 13.09.41

Google Reader Meets Its Inevitable End

Google announced that it’s killing off Google Reader effective July 1, 2013. Reader was Google’s web-based program that let people subscribe to news feeds from their favorite sites. That’s a shame, because Reader was pretty great.

While RSS has maybe seen its heyday come and go, Google Reader was notable not only for its features, but for the active community it fostered for which Reader wasn’t just another tool. Sure it was revolutionary in terms of function, but moreover it was beloved.

Reader grew out of Blogger. In the summer of 2004, Jason Shellen — who had come to Google with the Blogger acquisition — was working on Google’s Atom specification. He asked a Blogger engineer Chris Wetherell if it would be possible to build an in-browser XML-parser to make sense of all these feeds. This little tool became Google Reader. Shellen liked the product, but couldn’t get the go-ahead from Google to launch it under its social program, so he took it to Marissa Mayer, who was running Google’s consumer web services. Mayer gave Reader the green-light–provided the team would strip out its social features.

It debuted as a formal Google Labs product in 2005. It developed a number of novel features, like the ability to detect what you had read on a per-item basis. And by 2007, it outgrew Labs and emerged as its own product (via a post from its marketing manager Kevin Systrom, who would go on to found Instagram). And yet slowly, social crept back in.

Reader gave users the ability to friend, follow and share stories with others. It let readers share stories with each other, and comment on them too. It became a place not just to read new stories, but to share and discuss them with friends. It was a discovery tool and a salon all in one.

However, Google removed the ability to natively share and replaced it with a Google + sharing option in 2011. That was effectively the end of the Reader community, many members of which publiclylamented the loss.

And now, the entire product is going away for good. This wasn’t exactly unforeseen. Reader had long been basically ignored, its updates were few and far between. Last month, when many users started reporting problems, Google simply ignored the issue for several days before even commenting on it. The end of Reader has been in plain sight for some time. Wired asked Shellen if he was sad to see Google finally pull the plug.

“It’s more bittersweet,” he replied. “I’d almost rather see it go away than linger out there and languish.”

If you really loved Google Reader’s features, Feedly is planning to launch a clone of the service. It will give you the features, but the community is basically gone for good.

But what about you? Were you a Google Reader user? Are you still? Will you miss it?

Screen Shot 2013-03-13 at 07.52.49

Google Wants to Replace Your Passwords With Jewelry

As part of research into doing away with typed passwords, Google has built rings that not only adorn a finger but also can be used to log in to a computer or online account.

The search and ad company first revealed its plans to put an end to passwords in an academic paper published online in January. The effort focused on having people plug a small USB key that provides their credentials into a computer. The possibility of using special jewelry in a similar manner was mentioned in that paper.

At the RSA security conference in San Francisco last month, Mayank Upadhyay, a principal engineer at Google who specializes in security, became the first person at Google to speak in public about that research. He said that using personal hardware to log in would remove the dangers of people reusing passwords or writing them down. He also thought people would feel some familiarity with the approach. “Everyone is familiar with an ATM. What if you could use the same experience with a computer?”

Upadhyay said that Google’s trial was focused on a slim USB key that performs a cryptographic transaction with an online service to prove the key’s validity when it’s plugged into a computer. The key also has a contactless chip inside so that it can be used to log in via mobile devices.

Tokens like the ones Google is testing do not contain a static password that could be copied. The cryptographic key unique to the device is stored inside and is never transmitted. When the key is plugged in, it proves its validity by correctly responding to a mathematical challenge posed by the online service it is being used to log into, in a way that doesn’t produce any information that could be used to log in again.

Speaking after the session, Upadhyay said that the company also had a prototype ring that could take the place of a password token, although he didn’t give details on how it works. “Some people are not comfortable with a [USB] token,” he said.

Google is already talking with other companies to lay the groundwork for using the technology to access different services and websites. “It’s extremely early stages, and we’re trying to get more partners,” said Upadhyay. Talks have already started with the FIDO Alliance, a consortium that in February launched technology intended to enable new methods of secure log-in that rely less heavily on typed passwords.

 

Screen Shot 2013-03-08 at 10.48.47

Google to Cut 10% of Motorola’s Workforce

Google‘s Motorola is planning to cut 10% of its global workforce, the Wall Street Journalreports.

The news comes from an internal company email which explains the reasoning behind the job cuts. “While we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges,” it says.

“These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer. It’s obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition,” a Motorola spokesperson said.

Google plans to shed jobs in China, India and the U.S. A total of about 1,200 employees will lose their jobs.

This is a second major wave of layoffs in the company after Google decided to cut the Motorola Mobility workforce by 20% in August 2012. In December 2012, Google sold off Motorola’s set top business to Arris for $2.35 billion.

 

Google Glass in TED 2013

Google Glass will help fight the antisocial and “emasculating” habit of compulsive smartphone checking, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a surprise appearance at the TED Conference Wednesday.

In his 10-minute TED talk, Brin didn’t provide concrete new details on Glass, a cross between a smartphone and a pair of glasses. But he did confess that, having used Glass, he felt emasculated and isolated every time he checked his regular smartphone.

“You’re actually socially isolating yourself with your phone,” Brin told the audience. “I feel like it’s kind of emasculating…. You’re standing there just rubbing this featureless piece of glass.

In contrast to a smartphone, Google Glass allows people to keep their head up as digital information is overlaid onto their world, no matter where their gaze is pointed.

“I whip this out and focus on it as though I have something very important to attend to,” Brin added later, holding up his phone. “This [Google Glass] really takes away that excuse.… It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent secluded away in email or social posts.”

Brin also said Glass helps advance a longstanding dream of his to let users receive highly relevant information without actually having to run searches.

“My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all — the information would just come to you as you needed it,” Brin said. “This is the first form factor that can deliver that vision.”