There’s a lot of talk these days about Google Glass, Google’s new futuristic wearable computer that functions like a set of cyborg glasses, overlaying a HUD of Google products and search services over your life.
It certainly sounds impressive, and early reviews from the usual techno-nerds are positive. But what would Steve Jobs have thought of Google Glass?
He would have thought you were a dork for wearing one, and you needed to get laid.
This week on The CultCast: Google Maps gets prettier, smarter, and faster; Hangouts is a new chat app with some innovative features; Google Music is too late to party; Erfon eats H’orderves on a space jet with Tim Cook and Richard Branson; and Leander dons his powdered wig to judge an all new Faves ‘N Raves.
All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Show notes up next.
Earlier this week, Google beat Apple to the punch by launching a streaming subscription music service before Cuperino could unveil its own offering, iRadio.
How did Google managed to do it? Apple has all the music industry clout, so how could Google swing a deal first? Because Google Play Music All Access is essentially a clone of services like Rdio and Spotify, and the contract terms of services like that are easy to copy.
Apple’s iRadio? It’s a wholly different beast.
Well, we can’t say we’re too surprised with this one following this week’s leak, but it’s great to see Google Play game services has been officially confirmed at Google I/O this morning. The service will rival services like Game Center on iOS, and features will include cloud-based game syncing, online multiplayer, and more.
OK, so maybe not a huge surprise, but Google is said to launch a paid, subscription-based music service, like Rdio or Spotify, as soon as this week at the Google I/O conference, reports the Wall Street Journal.
According to “people familiar with the matter,” says the WSJ, the announcement of the new service could happen as soon as tomorrow, when Google hosts it’s annual I/O developer conference. The WSJ says that Google has previewed new music initiatives at I/O in the past, so it might just announce the streaming service there, as well.
Google I/O kicks off today, and one of the announcements you can look forward to is a new Google Maps service. Google accidentally teased major changes ahead of its official unveiling by opening up a new webpage that allowed users to request an invite to a new Maps service.
That page has now been pulled, but not before screenshots began making their way around the Internet.
Nearly three in every four smartphones sold during the first quarter of 2013 were running Android, according to the latest statistics from the analysts at Gartner. Google’s operating system grabbed a whopping 74% of the market share during the three-month period, while Apple’s iOS came in second with 18.2%.
Companies choosing to build Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Symbian powered devices might want to look away now.
The official SoundCloud apps for Android and iOS have today been updated to add support for Google+ Sign-In, allowing you to use your Google+ account in place of Facebook or Twitter. What’s more, there’s also support for Google+ sharing.
Google has been forced to hand over Android source code documents sought by Apple in an ongoing patent-infringement lawsuit against Samsung.
The search giant initially argued that it was not required to give up the documents and that it would be too burdensome to collect them, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal in San Jose, California, has given the company two days to give them up.
Google Babel, the new communication service from Google, has been renamed Google Hangouts ahead of its public debut at Google I/O next week, according to an unnamed Google employee. Babel had been its name internally throughout the service’s development, but that moniker has now been dropped by Google.
Android doesn’t look like it’s about to lose any of its market share to competing platforms any time soon. During the first quarter of 2013, Google’s platform powered a whipping 59.9% of all smart mobile devices sold as total shipments hit 308.7 million units.
Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, was installed on just 19.3% of devices — despite the success of its iPhones and iPads.
An amicus curiae or amicus brief is when someone who is not a party in a lawsuit offers information that bears on the case but that has not been solicited by any of the parties. It’s used mostly as a way to make sure that various issues that wouldn’t otherwise come up are heard in court, in hopes against an overly broad legal ruling that might have widespread repercussions. Amicus curiae means “friend of the court.”
Got all that? Good. Maybe now you can understand Apple’s issue with Google trying to issue an amicus brief urging the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals to overrule Apple’s request for a sales ban on Samsung devices. Friend of the court? More like co-defendant.
Apple wants to see documents related to Android source code in its ongoing patent infringement suit against Samsung. The Cupertino company has asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul S. Grewal to force Google to hand over the information, which it is allegedly withholding improperly, Bloomberg reports.
Google has begun integrating its notification center into Chromium for Mac, paving the way for Google Now for OS X. The Chrome OS feature was first ported to Chromium and then Chrome Canary for Windows back in March, but this is the first time it has been spotted on Mac.
Despite being a bitter rival of Apple, Google still makes some of the best iOS apps on the planet. One of my biggest gripes against Google’s apps though has been if you click a link inside Gmail, it opens up a Safari browser version of YouTube or Google Maps rather than opening the app directly.
Google has finally fixed that big annoyance by adding link support to Gmail for YouTube, Google Maps, and Chrome. The free update was just pushed out to the App Store. Now when you click on those links, the corresponding app will open up. You can turn the feature off if you want, but users who live and die by Gmail will certainly appreciate this simple feature.
Here are the release notes on the update:
While Google Glass is already compatible with iPhone, some of its killer features — including turn-by-turn navigation and text messaging — require a companion app that’s currently only available on Android. But according to one Google employee, Glass will soon be able to offer these features no matter what device it’s connected to.
Google brought its intelligent Google Now service to iOS earlier this week with an update to the Google Search app, and for many, the feature works very well. For a lot of others, however, Google Now appears to be causing a significantly negative impact on battery life — as we reported on Wednesday.
Google has since responded to these reports, calling them “incorrect” and insisting that Google Now does not have a battery drain issue.
Everyone’s favorite digital rights crusaders Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have just released an annual report, ranking the biggest companies in tech for who does the best job protecting your data from being rifled through by the Federal Government.
Google’s really good about it. Apple? They’ll give away all your emails and data if the government just breathes on them, and they won’t bother telling you about it either.
Google promised us it was coming, and after a lengthy Google Now today makes its debut on iOS. It’s available as part of an update to the Google Search app, and it’s exactly what users on Android have been enjoying for the past year.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has issued a note to investors in which he says the second-generation iPad mini with Retina display won’t enter mass production until October due to yield issues with the new high-resolution display. If true, the problem could make a fall launch for the device very unlikely.
Android may have the edge over iOS at the moment, but by 2015, there’s a chance Apple’s platform will have stolen the crown. And it’s all thanks to customer loyalty.
According to new research from Yankee Group, iPhone owners are more loyal to their devices and therefore less likely to stray to competing platforms. There’s a large percentage of Android users, however, who have plans to switch when it’s time to upgrade their smartphone.
LinkedIn has launched a new iPhone app today called LinkedIn Contacts, which promises to make it easier to stay in touch with your most important relationships. It brings all of your contacts together in one place, then provides you with alerts for birthdays, job changes, and more.
iCloud push services could soon resume in Germany more than a year after they were killed after a high court stayed Motorola’s patent trial against Apple on Wednesday. Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court issued a press release that said both Apple and Google — which now owns Motorola — agreed to the stay, which has called into question the validity of Motorola’s patent.
Apple’s iOS isn’t customizable like Android. To get to the core of the operating system, very talented hackers have to create what is called a jailbreak. One of the brightest and most prolific minds in the jailbreak scene has been Nicholas Allegra, better known as “comex.” Allegra created JailbreakMe, a web-based jailbreak tool that was used to crack multiple version of iOS throughout the years.
But for the past couple of years, Allegra has been quiet in the hacking community. The reason for his code of silence is the company he’s been working for. Apple hired him as an intern last year, and he left in October after failing to reply to a company email.
Now Allegra is going to bat for the other team. Yesterday he announced plans to intern at Google. He’ll start in a few weeks. One would assume he’ll be working on beefing up security for Android, but he ruled out the possibility on his Twitter. ” I don’t like it enough to ever want to hack it,” he said.
Source: Forbes
Google has allegedly purchased Wavii, a small natural language parsing startup, according to a report on TechCrunch. Wavii ended up going to Google for “more than $30 million” after a bidding war with Apple.
Wavii’s technology and talent will reportedly be integrated in Google Now and the Knowledge Graph, Google’s experimental division that is working on the future of search.