Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt's newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.
     |
Google Now is getting some I/O love, too. Several updates, called cards, are already available in the Google Play Store. Firstly, you'll be able to set for nagging pop-ups ("buy milk" is the obvious example). Now will also show you cards for upcoming books, albums and TV shows based on what Google thinks you'll like -- which could either be quite helpful or borderline insulting depending on how well it knows you. Finally, real-time public transportation updates will be available in select cities, and Japan will even get a "last train home" alert. Nab these features by visiting the source link below. No word on when the new functionality will hit the iOS Google Search app.
We got a look at the new features in action via an onstage demo. Voice queries like, "Okay, Google, show me things to do in Santa Cruz" will bring up relevant results, and subsequent questions like, "How far is the boardwalk from here?" take into account that you're in Santa Cruz -- and then give you up-to-date traffic info and route recommendations. When it comes to reminders, you can tell Google to nudge you about "calling Katie next Wednesday," for instance, and a card will pop up on your device at the specified time. This all looks pretty sweet, but we'll have to give Now a spin ourselves before reaching a final verdict.
Source: Google Search (Google Play)
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
In the early days of the internet economy, the saying went that webpages were created on Macs, served on Unix and viewed on Windows. In the iOS app economy, it's often the case that apps run on devices by Apple, but connect to services by Google. With the exception of many games, at this point, apps increasingly strive to be internet services.
Google has been investing in more of these services for a longer time and in a way more directly tied to apps than Apple has. Google Maps has been the best example, but others include Google Drive (with its editing features), Google Voice and Google+. In contrast, Apple's biggest consumer online service success (other than the iTunes store) has been iCloud, which is less app-like and more of a silent shuttle for documents and files among iOS devices.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
| |
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Google Now is fast becoming one of Android's defining features. But, if some recent additions to Chromium are anything to go by, the nifty little life-predictor could well be finding its way to Chrome browsers, too. An entry in the Chromium project code site titled "Show Google Now notifications in Chrome" along with some code revisions for "Creating a skeleton for Google Now for Chrome implementation" hints that the idea is, at least, at some level of development. This of course means that the service would leap out of its current mobile OS restraints, and become available to a much wider audience -- at least those using some portion of the Google ecosystem -- and not just its Android platform. The code was spotted by an eagle-eyed François Beaufort, who points out the reference to it working with Chrome's desktop notifications. While we wait for more official word, we guess a card to notify us of when this might be coming would be too much to ask?
Filed under: Desktops, Internet, Google
Via: CNET
Source: Francois Beaufort (Google+)