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Google I/O 2011 – 1st day Keynote

May 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The first keynote of the Google I/O 2011 focuses completely on the Android platform. Here are some of the highlights.

Android

  • 100 million activations
  • 4.5 billion installs of applications
  • over 200,000 applications
  • Honeycomb 3.1 update available very soon
  • 3.1 can act as USB host – directly connect USB devices to your Android tablet (camera, keyboard, game controller)
  • Also coming to Google TV this summer

Next release Ice Cream Sandwich

  • Q4 2011 targeted launch
  • Focus on choice of device: available for phones, tablets, and tablets turning into laptops(!)
  • New tools to accommodate different screen sizes
  • Completely Open Source
  • Demo of feedback from position of head vs. tablet, Android’s version of Photobooth. More useful demo: on video chat with multiple speakers system focuses automatically on the person speaking.

Android Cloud services

  • Android market expanded to movies.
  • $3.99 rental for 30 days
  • Ability to make movie rentals available offline (for viewing on for example airplane)
  • Available across all devices, phone, tablet, laptop and PC.
  • Music Beta by Google
  • Makes music available across all devices
  • Instant mix based on a selected song
  • Adding music over the air – never have to use a cable again, no syncing (hey, Apple!)
  • Make Available Offline also available for music
  • When getting new phone, all that is needed is signing into Google account
  • Rolling out in beta, up to 20,000 songs, free while in beta

Industry partnership

  • New platform releases rolling out faster based on new industry partnership
  • New updates automatically for 18 months as long as hardware supports

More

  • Android Open Accessory API
  • Takes openness to a new level by allowing hardware by 3rd parties
  • Demo of exercise bike connected to Android phone, automatically starts CardioQuest application, and bike detects that CardioQuest is running and relinquishes control to phone.
  • API for Gingerbread and Honeycomb available today
  • Starting out with USB, Bluetooth available later
  • ADK (Accessories Development Kit) based on Arduino.
  • Demo of Labyrinth game where controller is an Android tablet.
  • Completely open, no NDA, no fees, no approval process.
  • Android@Home
  • New protocol to allow devices to communicate with each other and with Android – Partnering with Lightning Science – LED lightbulbs and switches – by end of year.
  • Android@Home hub – project Tungsten. Demo of music playing through multiple devices. Combination of Music and @Home to identify music cds and automatically start playing them

 

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Khan Academy – On-line learning with a twist

May 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Recently I heard Leo LaPorte in one of the Twit Network podcasts talk about Khan Academy. He was very enthusiastic about it, and recommended it to everyone. I followed his recommendation and checked it out.

Khan Academy is a completely free, donation-driven on-line learning  resource. It covers an enormous range of topics, from simple arithmetic, through algebra and trigonometry, up to chemistry, history, and physics. The level of these topics also has a broad range, from kindergarten up to an academic level.

There is a certain game element thrown into the mix by keeping track of energy points. Everything you do – watching a video, doing an exercise – earns you energy points. Apart from the energy points, you can earn badges – ranging from correct answer streaks to becoming proficient in all mathematical exercises.

Khan Academy is definitely worth checking out, especially for people who consider themselves eternal students!

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VMWare acquires SlideRocket

April 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Today, SlideRocket announced that they have been acquired by VMWare.

SlideRocket is an online presentation tool, that tries to put a new twist on the age-old and most of the time boring PowerPoint presentation. With SlideRocket, you can easily integrate audio, rich media, and instant feedback to bring a presentation to life.

VMWare is an industry-leading virtualization platform, that has a range of products covering anything from simple workstation to multi-core, multi-disk top-of-the-line server array.

By the sound of the press release, it seems to me that VMWare is trying to expand themselves past their core business of virtualization, and get more into cloud computing. Previous steps in that direction include VMWare View, ThinApp and Zimbra. Hopefully, the estimated 20,000 users of SlideRocket will continue to be serviced by this pretty awesome presentation tool.

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Google bringing Google I/O to the world with I/O Live

April 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Google announced Thursday that they will be bringing Google I/O to the web, naming it I/O Live.

After the tickets to Google I/O sold out in under an hour, Google decided to do the same thing several other companies (notably Progress with their Exchange conference) and bring the presentations to the web. They will be streaming live video from the two largest conference rooms, capturing the keynotes, but also session from Android and Chrome. There will be real-time captions of the live streams courtesy of Google Translate. And last but not least, you can submit questions directly to the sandbox developers.

Google I/O 2011 starts at 9AM PDT on May 10th.

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ICT MxR lab responds to Google’s April Fools joke by implementing it

April 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

ICT MxR lab responded to Google’s April Fools joke by implementing their gesture interface in about one hour. To accomplish that, they used a toolkit called FAAST (Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit) and implemented the program SLOOW (Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving). It uses the XBox Kinect system to capture the human motions. See for yourself what a simple prank can lead to:

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