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1,026 'Google' stories August 2010 - August 2014

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Google Play Music for iPhone updated w/ ability to remove music on-the-go, improved playback, more

Zac Hall Aug 21 2014 - 8:19 am PT

5 Comments

It’s been just over a month since the last big update to Google Play Music for iPhone, and today the Google Play Music team is rolling out another update with new features and improvements. The latest release brings the version number to 1.3.2.2559 for those keeping track at home, and adds a handful of new functionality like the ability to remove music from your library via the iPhone app. The update also boasts additional accessibility features which will surely be appreciated as well as fixes for issues with skipping during track playback and eliminating duplicate listings in the music library. You can see the full change log below.
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Cupertino wins race to be first west coast location to get AT&T’s gigabit-speed fiber

Ben Lovejoy Aug 20 2014 - 5:15 am PT

6 Comments

AT&T has announced that Apple’s home city of Cupertino will be the first west coast location to get its gigabit fiber Internet service, GigaPower, reports Re/code.

Cupertino is among several Bay Area cities that AT&T had previously said it was considering — a list that included San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Campbell and Mountain View. Specific timing, availability and pricing for the Cupertino service will be announced later, AT&T said.

GigaPower is a 100 percent fiber optic network offering speeds of up to one gigabit. To put that speed into perspective, you could download an HD TV show in three seconds and download 25 music tracks in one second.

AT&T’s rivals in the gigabit Internet race include Google Fiber, based in nearby Mountain View. You can check availability of GigaPower on AT&T’s site.

Photo credit: siliconvalleyandbeyond.com

Google releases new Photo Sphere Camera app for iPhone

Zac Hall Aug 19 2014 - 9:02 am PT

5 Comments

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9D3PxwGvC8&feature=youtu.be]

Google has dropped a new app for iPhone this morning called Photo Sphere Camera. The app offers a special camera that allows you to capture 360º images – everything above, below, and around you – for viewing and sharing. The new app even allows you to publish 360º images you capture to Google Maps for others to see as well. Google notes that the app requires iPhone 4S or higher for capturing images. Photo Sphere Camera is available for free on the App Store joining a long list of other Google apps including its popular game augmented reality game Ingress.
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Xiaomi, the Chinese company behind the Mi Pad, announces iOS-like Android skin

Ben Lovejoy Aug 18 2014 - 4:00 am PT

26 Comments

Not content with a blatant copy of the iPad mini and a smartphone called the Mi Phone, Xiaomi’s latest Android overlay – MIUI 6 – bears more than a passing resemblance to iOS 7. The flat icons, the icon screens scrolling above the fixed app tray at the bottom, the calendar, calculator, compass …
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Apple starts using China Telecom’s data centers to store iCloud data for China users, rather than US locations

Benjamin Mayo Aug 14 2014 - 1:11 am PT

1 Comment

Update: Apple confirmed the use of China Telecom servers in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

But the company said Friday in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that all data stored is encrypted, meaning China Telecom won’t have access to its content.

“Apple takes user security and privacy very seriously. We have added China Telecom to our list of data center providers to increase bandwidth and improve performance for our customers in mainland China,” it said.

Apple has begun using Chinese data centers to store iCloud data for local Apple customers, the first time Apple has used mainland China for iCloud account and information storage. On a municipal government website, Fuzhuo City Telecom said that ‘Apple China has completed the iCloud data dump into China Telecom’s cloud services’. The post has since been taken down from the government site, however.

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Former Siri team working on radically new virtual personal assistant with true artificial intelligence

Ben Lovejoy Aug 12 2014 - 6:36 am PT

33 Comments

“Siri is chapter one of a much longer, bigger story,” says Dag Kittlaus, one of three of the original creators of Apple’s virtual personal assistant. The team, originally acquired by Apple as part of its $200M purchase of Siri, has now left the company to form a new startup, Viv Labs, to work on the rest of that story.

The vision described by the team in a lengthy piece in Wired is certainly ambitious. The problem with Siri, they say, is that it can only do things it has been explicitly programmed to do.

Though Apple has since extended Siri’s powers—to make an OpenTable restaurant reservation, for example—she still can’t do something as simple as booking a table on the next available night in your schedule. She knows how to check your calendar and she knows how to use OpenTable. But putting those things together is, at the moment, beyond her.

What Kittlaus and his team want to do is create a personal assistant which can learn to do new things for itself …
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UK carrier reports increased Apple Maps usage as ComScore numbers show downward trend

Mark Gurman Aug 11 2014 - 10:44 am PT

18 Comments

Apple’s Maps app, introduced as part of iOS 6 in 2012, has had its fair share of technical issues and was the source of a PR crisis and the ejection of multiple long-time Apple executives. But two years later, if data from UK carrier EE is any indication, Apple Maps usage appears to be on an upward trend. Here’s the latest usage data for Apple Maps from the network:

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A MacBook and a few parts from eBay allow hobbyists to take control of an abandoned NASA spacecraft

Ben Lovejoy Aug 11 2014 - 4:35 am PT

3 Comments

team A MacBook, a flatscreen monitor rescued from a dumpster, a few parts bought on eBay and an abandoned McDonalds as a base may seem a reasonable basis for a hobbyist electronics project of some kind – but taking control of an abandoned NASA spacecraft might feel a little ambitious. Not so, says a team of nine geeks who have successfully taken control of ISEE-3, a spacecraft launched by NASA 36 years ago to measure the solar wind and radiation. The story of what has to be a strong candidate for coolest thing ever is told in full in BetaBeat.

The satellite’s battery has been dead for over 20 years, but it had solar panels to power 98 percent of the satellite’s full capabilities. In its heyday, it ran missions around the Moon and Earth, and flew through the tail of a comet. But technology gets old, and everyone happily let the successful satellite go, knowing it would be back in Earth’s orbit someday — namely, 2014.

Since the satellite went offline, the team had retired, the documentation was lost and the equipment was outdated. They could still hear the satellite out there talking, but they’d need to build the equipment to talk back.

They did have a few more expensive requirements, like a helicopter to lift a transmitter into place, but a crowdfunding campaign took care of the costs. There was then the small matter of getting permission from NASA, no doubt helped by one of the team being a former employee.

They brought the idea to NASA, but there was no precedent on which to base an agreement. No external organization has ever taken command of a spacecraft, but NASA didn’t want to say no, so they asked the team if they needed any help.

Astonishingly, they’ve now successfully placed the craft in a new orbit around the sun, and Google has helped them build a website that will be used to share data transmitted back from it – appropriately enough named Spacecraft For All. The full story is well worth a read.

This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated

Google begins displaying “Listen Now” ads for streaming music services (including Beats) in search results

Jordan Kahn Aug 8 2014 - 1:27 pm PT

0 Comments

Google appears to be experimenting with new “Listen Now” ads in search results for streaming music services including its own Google Play Music and competitors like Apple’s Beats Music. The Wall Street Journal first noticed the ads and confirmed the new format with Google:

The ads appear in searches on personal computers as well as mobile devices and are performing well for some advertisers, according to one person familiar with the results. Music services previously could have bought similar ads, but the grouping, display and labeling are new. “We’re happy to help users quickly find legitimate sources for their favorite movies, music and more via Google search,” a Google spokesman said.

Google also confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the music services pay per click just like traditional ads it displays in search. Along with its own Google Play service and Apple’s Beats Music, the Listen Now section is also currently showing ads from Rhapsody and Spotify.

Google has experimented with other types of links for content in search results including “Watch Now” links for movies and tv that direct users to its Google Play service. It also recently laucnhed app indexing on Android, which displays a button for users to quickly launch apps from search results.

Court rejects earlier $324 million anti-poaching settlement between Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe

Mike Beasley Aug 8 2014 - 12:42 pm PT

9 Comments

Image via <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-01/tech-hubris-the-silicon-valley-antitrust-hiring-conspiracy#p2" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>

A judge has rejected a settlement that was reached earlier this year between employees of Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe and their respective companies, CNBC reported today. According to reports from the courtroom, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the settlement was not high enough and should actually be $380 million.

The lawsuit was brought against the tech giants in question by current and former employees who believed (correctly) that their employers had created agreements to avoid attempting to hire engineers from one another. The idea was that if no competitors were making offers, each company was free to pay its employees whatever it wanted without having to worry about them jumping ship for a better offer.

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Samsung and Apple agree to end all patent disputes outside of the United States

Chance Miller Aug 5 2014 - 7:19 pm PT

12 Comments

Samsung and Apple just announced that they have agreed to drop all patent suits against each other in countries outside the United States, Bloomberg reports. The two companies will drop suits against each other in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Netherlands, the U.K., France and Italy. This agreement does not include any licensing agreements, though. This has no effect on United States battles either.

In a joint statement, the two companies had the following to say:

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The 12 reasons Apple employees love working for the company

Ben Lovejoy Aug 1 2014 - 5:31 am PT

12 Comments

Business Insider did some trawling through the employee reviews site Glassdoor to find out what Apple employees love about working for the company.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in a company co-founded by a man who saw his mission as changing the world, the feeling that you have a chance to do just that topped the list. It’s the philosophy reflected in the memo Apple gave to new employees on their first day, saying that people who join the company want their work “to add up to something … something big … something that couldn’t happen anywhere else.”
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Xiaomi VP and former Google exec (unconvincingly) denies the company copies Apple

Ben Lovejoy Jul 22 2014 - 6:36 am PT

13 Comments

You’d think it would be pretty hard to deny that Chinese Android phone and tablet manufacturer Xiaomi copies Apple – yet that’s exactly what former Google exec and now Xiaomi’s global vice president Hugo Barra tried to do in an interview with The Verge.

Allegations of it copying Apple are “sweeping sensationalist statements because they have nothing better to talk about,” he says.

Well, let’s see …

Let’s start with the company’s phones. Admittedly they don’t look much like iPhones, but they are called … the Mi Phone. Still, I’m sure that’s coincidence.

Then there’s the company’s tablet. No prizes for guessing the name of that. And here’s what the Mi Pad looks like – remind you of anything?

Barra says that’s coincidence, too.

“If you have two similarly skilled designers, it makes sense that they would reach the same conclusion,” he argues. “It doesn’t matter if somebody else has reached the same conclusion.”

Let’s look at the marketing materials. Hmm, anyone ever seen spec boxes like these anywhere before?

What about a product launch. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but there’s something about a company CEO on a stage wearing blue jeans and a black turtleneck that looks somehow familiar …

Still, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun toned it down today, swapping the turtleneck for a t-shirt as he introduced the company’s new wearable, the Mi Band. Sacha Pallenberg tweeted this photo of Lei Jun’s original approach to the launch, making a smaller announcement first and then introducing it with the words …

But hey, two similarly skilled presenters are going to reach the same conclusion about how best to spring a surprise, right?

Top image credit: Business Insider

EU accuses Apple of dragging its feet on protections for ‘misleading’ IAP-driven free apps

Benjamin Mayo Jul 18 2014 - 4:43 am PT

24 Comments

The European Commission has complained that Apple is taking too long to implement protections for freemium games in the App Store, reports BBC News. The Commission has decreed that both Apple and Google, the two biggest app store vendors, must make the “true cost of apps” clear before purchase. However, officials are upset that Apple has not yet committed to any such measures.

“Regrettably, no concrete and immediate solutions have been made by Apple to date to address the concerns linked in particular to payment authorisation,” the Commission said in a statement.

“Apple has proposed to address those concerns. However, no firm commitment and no timing have been provided for the implementation of such possible future changes.

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Google updates 2D physics engine LiquidFun with Chrome extension and iOS support

9to5 Staff Jul 17 2014 - 11:08 am PT

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Google today announced the release of LiquidFun 1.1, an update to the open-sourced 2D physics engine originally released last December. New in today’s release is browser support and this allows games using the engine only found on Android devices to be ported over as Chrome extensions. Also new in the update is iOS support. Google says previous versions of the engine could be modified to work on iOS, but today’s update brings native support to the platform. The release notes are below:

LiquidFun now runs in your browser! Using Emscripten, we’ve translated LiquidFun into JavaScript. You can see LiquidFun’s Testbed application, rewritten in JavaScript, running on our landing page.

We’ve added iOS support for LiquidFun’s internal Testbed and EyeCandy applications. Earlier versions of LiquidFun could be made to run on iOS, but iOS is now officially supported.

We’ve optimized LiquidFun’s particle simulation. In particular, we’ve written NEON (a.k.a., Advanced SIMD) code to improve performance on ARM processors.

We’ve stabilized the simulation, fixed bugs, and added some cool new functions, including one that automatically splits a particle group into multiple, disjoint particle groups.

We’ve clarified and improved the documentation, thanks to questions from the LiquidFun community.

Google releases official Analytics app for iPhone with Real Time reports

Mark Gurman Jul 17 2014 - 6:09 am PT

1 Comment

Google has added yet another official application to its iOS App Store portfolio: Google Analytics. Analytics is Google’s popular service that allows website owners to manage and view data such as page views, demographics, and the technologies users utilize to access the website. The iPhone app also has the neat Real Time reports feature that allows website owners to view how many people are on the website at the current time. Google launched an optimized version of the Analytics app last year on Android and debuted a related AdWords app on iOS just last week. Like all Google apps, the Analytics program is on the the App Store for free.

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Google now flags Flash content in search results on iOS/Android devices, saving clicks

Ben Lovejoy Jul 15 2014 - 4:58 am PT

2 Comments

If you’ve ever been frustrated by visiting a website on your iPhone or iPad and finding it won’t work because it uses Flash, you’ll welcome the latest Google initiative: it is now flagging Flash content in its search results, warning that the site may not work on your device.

Starting today, we will indicate to searchers when our algorithms detect pages that may not work on their devices. For example, Adobe Flash is not supported on iOS devices or on Android versions 4.1 and higher, and a page whose contents are mostly Flash may be noted

As Google notes, Android has now also abandoned Flash support due to the same reliability, security and performance concerns that Steve Jobs expressed in his famous open letter to Adobe back in 2010. Adobe has been forced to issue a succession of security updates to Flash, the most recent being two emergency updates earlier this year.

Google says it hopes the move, coupled to Web Fundamentals and Web Starter Kit initiatives for developers will encourage the use of HTML5 in place of Flash.

Apple employees are ‘swiped right’ on the least in Hinge app tech company survey

Mark Gurman Jul 14 2014 - 1:20 pm PT

11 Comments

Apple employees are certainly Geniuses, but their colleagues across the technology company sphere don’t find them the most attractive, according to a survey compiled by app Hinge and shared by the Wall Street Journal. Hinge, which works similar to app Tinder but with a professional twist, allows users to swipe left or right on another person. You swipe right if you want to connect, and you swipe left if you don’t want to connect.

The survey indicates that people swiped right on Amazon employees 14.2% more than the average rate, Microsoft employees 8.2% above the average rate, Google employees 7.2% above the average rate, Facebook employees 2.3% above the average rate, and Apple employees 0.2% below the average rate. On the other hand, Apple employees swiped right 0.5% more of the time than the average user:

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Google launches augmented reality game Ingress on iOS

Chance Miller Jul 13 2014 - 8:33 pm PT

6 Comments

After becoming available to all Android users back in December, Google this evening finally launched its popular Ingress game on iOS. The game originally launched in a closed beta all the way back in 2012, but has slowly been expanding to gradually larger audiences ever since.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss-Z-QjFUio]

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Google Maps for iOS adds mapped search results and Gmail appointments, more

Zac Hall Jul 11 2014 - 9:42 am PT

2 Comments

Google today updated its Maps application for iPhone and iPad to version 3.2 introducing new features and improvements.

The latest version of Google Maps now supports viewing search results with descriptions directly on the map view. Gmail users will notice appointments and reservations with addresses will now appear the map view as well. The update supports changing between the map view of results and the list view of results and features an explore view for discovering new locations to try out.

Google Maps 3.2 for iPhone and iPad is out today on the App Store.

Google launches YouTube Creator Studio app for iOS

Dom Esposito Jul 10 2014 - 8:31 am PT

6 Comments

Following the release of YouTube Creator Studio for Android, Google has now made the app available for iOS devices. What’s the Creator Studio, you ask? Well, Google has finally created an all-in-one app hub for YouTube creators to access channel/video-specific information. Basically, it’s only helpful if you actually make (or plan to make) YouTube videos.

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Google releases AdWords Express app for iPhone and iPad

Jordan Kahn Jul 10 2014 - 6:46 am PT

0 Comments

Google today released an iOS app for its AdWords Express advertising service. The app, which is available for only Google’s automated AdWords Express advertising service aimed at small businesses, allows users to view stats from advertisements created with the service, edit the advertisements, adjust budgets, and get notifications related to campaigns directly from within the iPhone or iPad app:

AdWords Express helps you reach new customers on Google. Create your ad in less than 15 minutes, and only pay when potential customers click your ad to visit your website or give you a call. Stay connected to how your ad is doing — all from your mobile device.
– See how many calls, clicks and views your ad is getting
– Edit your ad text or adjust your budget anytime
– Get notified with important messages in your account
– Have questions? Call us at 1-855-235-8904 for free setup help
The app is free to download, but you’re required to enter billing information to pay for your ads.

Google already had an AdWords Express app available for Android users, but it doesn’t yet have mobile apps for its full-fledged AdWords service. On the flip side of the AdWords business, last year publishers got an official AdSense iPhone app from Google for monitoring advertising and revenues.

The Google AdWords Express app is available on the App Store now for iPhone and iPad users in the US.

iPad screenshots below:

Apple’s top lawyer reported Google to FTC over in-app purchases by kids

Ben Lovejoy Jul 9 2014 - 7:50 am PT

15 Comments

Apple seemingly wasn’t too happy that it was singled out for an FTC investigation into making it too easy for children to make in-app purchases: following its own settlement back in January, the company’s general counsel Bruce Sewell promptly reported Google for the same thing, reports Politico.

“I thought this article might be of some interest, particularly if you have not already seen it,” Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell wrote to FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Democratic Commissioner Julie Brill, pointing to a report that criticized Google’s app store over the same issue of unauthorized purchases …

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Manything video security app gets IFTTT support, can automate control of Nest, Hue, WeMo and more

Ben Lovejoy Jul 9 2014 - 6:07 am PT

5 Comments

While you’ve probably heard of Dropcam (which we like), you may not have heard of Manything – the cloud video service that allows you to use iOS devices as the smart cameras. You might want to check it out now, though, as the app has just added IFTTT support – giving access to a whole new world of automation.

Previously, Manything could use motion-detection to alert you to something moving inside or outside your home and send you an alert plus live video stream, enabling you to check it out remotely. Adding IF This Then That support makes it much more powerful – examples below …
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