DigitalOutbox Episode 124
DigitalOutbox Episode 124 – Google I/O
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2:00 – Google IO Day 1
– Android – 400m activations, 1m a day
– 4.1 – Jelly Bean
– Project Butter – Focus on performance – buttery smooth and predicts your movement – much better frame rate
– Auto arrange icons
– Improved keyboard with predictive text
– Offline voice typing
– Extra languages and improved accessability
– Android beam
– Improved notifications – actionable, looks great
– Search improved – better voice searching. Sounded natural, Siri competitor
– Google now – uses search history, calendar ad other signals
– Google now will learn schedules and patterns to prompt you with information. It will reroute your commute if there’s traffic automatically before you leave the house.
– “if you have an upcoming flight that you’ve searched for, it will keep you updated on the status of the flight.”
– Reminded me of passcode from Apple
– Available mid July
– For dev’s – app encryption, app updates only download changes and not the whole app, google cloud messaging free for all devs,
– Google play – adding tv, episodes, films and magazines
– Google Nexus 7 made by Asus
– Built for Google play – fire competitor?
– The display — 1280 x 800 HD display. Perfect for reading and videos. Performance, Tegra 3 with a quad-core CPU, 12 core GPU
– Front facing camera, all the connectivity you’d expect. Gyro and accelerometer. Up to 9 hours of video playback, and up to 300 hours of standby.
– 340 grams
– $199 ships July with Android 4.1
– £159 for 8gb, £199 for 16gb in the UK – pre-order now and ships 2-3 weeks – wow – who needs a kindle fire now? Makes ipod touch seem expensive. Initial reports say BOM cost is higher than $200. 8 GB version of the tablet will be sold exclusively through Google Play for £159 ($247). The 16 GB version will cost £199 ($309) and will be available at retail stores such as PC World, Comet, Tesco and eBuyer.
One of the first retailers to officially confirm the news is Carphone Warehouse, which says the device will be available either for £199.99 standalone or for free on a tethered contact.
– Ships with Chrome browser
– New Google maps – can save a city offline and great inside support
– Nexus Q
– Small android powered computer
– It’s designed to live in your home. It plugs into your TV and stereo, and it’s always connected to the cloud. You use your device to control it, but you’re not streaming from that device to the Q. You use your phone or device to control the cloud.
– Streaming media player
– $299 – no thanks. This looks rubbish.
– Google+ for tablets
– Like tumblr combined with google+
– Very visual
– For android tablets today, ipad soon
– Google+ events
– Nice way to save invites – integrates with calendar
– Party mode – photo’s at event are shared amongst everyone as they take them
– Project Glass!!!!
– Best demo ever – live skydive onto moscone roof
– Skydivers wearing project glass, live video from plane, skydive and on hangout
– We wanted to position the display above your eye. It’s designed to be part of your vision, but not blocking it.
– Imagine this at demo’s, protests etc being broadcast live on hangouts…tis the future…somehow
– Why glass – We believe communication with images, and access to devices that empower people to communicate in news ways are very powerful ideas.
– So the second aspiration for Glass is to be able to access information quickly.
– Obviously, capturing video and images is only a part of what a wearable computer can do. But why are we showing you this utility?
– That’s why we want to involve all of you
– Today, I’d like to announce the Google Glass explorer edition.
– It’s only available for pre order here at IO. It’s only for US based, I apologize. We’ll try to broaden the base over time. It will be $1500. And we’re going to ship it to you early next year.
– Hope to launch to consumers in 2014
– Wrap-up – 2+ hours of keynote – We think it’s important for you to experiment early. So we’ve put together an Android developer pack. All 6000 of you will be walking away today with a new Galaxy Nexus phone, a Nexus 7 tablet and a Nexus Q.
26:28 – Google IO Day 2
– Chrome
– Lots of stats – worlds most popular browser
– Chrome tab syncing across platforms…
– Chrome for iPhone – launches today…and iPad too – Ian’s happy 🙂
– Google drive – iOS and Android support
– Editing Google docs and also offline editing – boom
– Chrome O/S and Google App Engine
– Google Compute Cloud
– “It gives you Linux virtual machines at Google scale.
– High performance networking between VMs, so you can form them into a cluster.
– Not much detail
– Cirque du Soleil in a browser demo – lots of 3d css
– “And we’re giving you all a brand new Samsung Chromebox,” says Sundar
35:45 – Google TV finally launches in the UK
– Google is making its long-expected assault on the UK television market with the launch in July of its first product – made by Sony – to let Britons surf the internet, play games and watch videos on TV.
– The move comes amid predictions that Apple too will move into the “smart TV” market, to compete not only with Google, but with Samsung, Sony and LG. All have been aiming to catch a nascent market that analysts say will become very important because it is one of the few bastions of entertainment not yet revolutionised by the internet.
– Google has a partnership with Sony to launch the internet TV set-top boxes, priced £200-£300, in UK stores from 16 July. The gadgets are based on Google’s Android software for smartphones and will let viewers switch between popular online applications such as Twitter and the BBC’s iPlayer while watching live TV.
– Google’s TV offering has struggled in the US, where it launched in October 2010. Logitech, a partner, lost millions after launching a Google TV set-top box in the US at Christmas 2010. During one quarter, more boxes were returned by customers than sold and the company later pulled out.
– Google has since spent heavily on the product, as the living room shapes up to be the latest battleground for internet companies. Nearly a million net-connected TVs were sold in the UK in 2010, the latest year for which figures are available, out of a total of 10m TV sales. But it is not clear how many were then actually connected to the net.
– Google-owned YouTube features heavily on the new service and, rather than the homemade clips of antics involving cats and dogs, boasts a library of films, premium music videos and live broadcasts of concerts from around the world.
– Unlike Apple’s current internet TV set-top box – which sells at £100, half the price of the Sony set-top boxes – Google TV brings the entire online world on to the big screen, including emails, news websites and Wikipedia.
– The Google TV products, including the £200 NSZ-GS7 internet player and the £300 NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player (available from October), come with an internet-connected remote control which has a full Qwerty keypad on the reverse.
39:29 – Tech fault causes problems for Natwest and RBS
– RBS and Natwest have failed to register inbound payments for up to three days, customers have reported, leaving people unable to pay for bills, travel and even food. The banks – both owned by RBS Group – have confirmed that technical glitches have left bank accounts displaying the wrong balances and certain services unavailable. There is no fix date available.
The ongoing screw-up means that people waiting on pay checks, transfers or social welfare have been left out of pocket.
– RBS and Natwest spokespeople have assured customers that they are working on the problem but were unable to name a fix time. The crash also affects other RBS Group banks including UlsterBank in Northern Ireland.
– Amid rising anger, he had spent Saturdayat RBS’s City headquarters overseeing efforts to process the mountain of transactions delayed by the IT problem, which began on Thursday. In total, 7,000 staff were coming in on Sundayto handle customers’ queries and tackle the backlog.
– The bank has also been forced to promise redress to thousands of other people, many not NatWest customers, who have failed to receive their salaries because their employers use the bank.
– The RBS spokesman said the bank would refund overdraft charges or other costs incurred by customers who have slipped into the red or seen direct debits bounce as a result of the problems.
42:13 – Microsoft buy Yammer for $1.2 billion
– Microsoft just announced it has indeed acquired Yammer, the four-year-old social networking company for enterprises, for $1.2 billion in cash.
– The announcement confirms weeks of very credibly-sourced rumors that have been floating for weeks around the tech blogosphere (and San Francisco’s popular cafes, as first overheard by Business Insider’s Owen Thomas.) The actual price tag is exactly what had been reported by theWall Street Journal more than a week ago. According to Microsoft, the Yammer team will be folded into its Microsoft Office division while continuing to report to Yammer’s CEO and co-founder David Sacks.
– With the backing of Microsoft, our aim is to massively accelerate our vision to change the way work gets done with software that is built for the enterprise and loved by users.”
– The Yammer deal also puts Microsoft further into the game of developing social media services specifically for enterprises, an area where companies like Oracle, Salesforce and IBM have been actively playing, too. But it will be interesting to see how it turns this new focus on social media services into a solidly profitable part of its larger business. As it has had to do with Skype, Microsoft will now face the challenge of figuring out how to monetize Yammer.
44:34 – Jimmy Wales rallies Britain over TVShack extradition
– Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is spearheading a fresh attempt to block the extradition of a British student to the United States over copyright infringement charges.
Richard O’Dwyer was arrested and bailed in 2010 for being the owner and operator of TVShack, a “resource site” which allowed people to search for web pages hosting videos — many of them pirated. The domain had been seized by U.S. federal agentsseveral months earlier, but after British prosecutors declined to follow up the charges in May 2011, Department of Justice officials launched extradition proceedings.
– Now Wales has joined a cohort of campaigners who say that if O’Dwyer is to be taken to court for his activity, it should be in Britain and not in the United States — and that he should not be forced to leave the United Kingdom.
– The issue of Britain’s extradition agreement with the U.S. has come up several times before in technology circles, not least in the case of Gary McKinnon — the hacker who broke into American military computers in 2002 looking for evidence of UFOs and has spent the last decade fighting extradition.
But O’Dwyer’s case is more complicated and confusing — and controversial — than McKinnon’s.
– First there is the legality of the situation: O’Dwyer has argued that his site was merely a search engine — like Google — that complied with takedown requests when asked. The fact that he has not been pursued by the British authorities suggests that the evidence against him is not as strong as opponents might hope.
– Then there is the fact that none of the alleged crimes were committed on U.S. soil, or by an American. This makes many opponents concerned about the potential implications for cross-border prosecution in the future.
– Then there is the unignorable fact that the case involves copyright.
– 69,000 sign the petition
48:16 – Judgement reserved on airport tweet trial
– Judgement has been reserved in the appeal of a man who was found guilty of posting a comment on Twitter threatening to blow up an airport.
– Paul Chambers, 27, from Doncaster, who now lives in Northern Ireland, was convicted in May 2011 of sending a “menacing electronic communication”.
– He claimed it was a joke and wants his conviction and sentence quashed.
Comedian Stephen Fry, who was at the High Court hearing, said it was “very important” for freedom of speech.
– The judgement was reserved until a later date.
49:22 – Internet piracy appeal fee
– Suspected internet pirates will have 20 working days to appeal against allegations of copyright infringement and must pay £20 to do so, according to revised plans to enforce the UK’s Digital Economy Act.
– The details are contained in secondary legislation presented to Parliament and a draft code published by Ofcom.
– The telecoms regulator said it expected the scheme to begin in 2014.
Campaigners oppose the fee saying users should be innocent until proven guilty.
– Under the plans users suspected of accessing or uploading illegally copied files will be sent letters from their internet service provider (ISP), delivered at least one month apart, informing them they are suspected of copyright infringement.
– The messages will also contain information about where to find licensed material online. Copyright owners can request details about all the accusations made against any account-holder who receives three or more letters within a 12-month period, but the user’s name will not be revealed at this stage.
51:55 – Nintendo announce the 3DS XL
– Nintendo is launching a new version of its 3DS handheld console, complete with screens that are 90% larger than those on the original model. The Nintendo 3DS XL will launch across Europe on 28 July.
– The new version of the console will come in three new colour combinations – silver and black, red and black, and blue and black – and will be bundled with a 4GB SD card so buyers can immediately start downloading games from the Nintendo eShop.
– However, the device will not ship with an AC adaptor in Japan or Europe – in its press release, Nintendo states that as most buyers will already own the original 3DS, an adaptor is being left out to allow for a lower retail price. An AC adaptor will be supplied with the console in North America.
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