Apple unveiled a new mobile wallet on Tuesday aimed at allowing consumers to use iPhones linked to credit cards for more secure, convenient payments.
Apple chief Tim Cook said the Apple Pay system would replace an "antiquated payment process" with "an entirely new payment system" that allows consumers to touch their phones to retail terminals.
The new payment system will be built into the new iPhones and Apple's operating system which were also unveiled Thursday.
Cook said that each day in the United States alone "that's 200 million times that we scramble through our credit cards and go through what is a fairly antiquated payment process."
He said other efforts have failed because the companies introducing mobile wallets were working on the basis of "their self-interest" instead of the user experience.
Cook showed a video of a consumer tapping a phone on a payment terminal, commenting, "it's so cool."
Google plans an Android L Preview release at its Google I/O show.
Google plans to release an early version of its upcoming Android operating system, Android L Preview, on Thursday.
The software will be available for those with Google Nexus 5 smartphones and Nexus 7 tablets, Android user-interface engineer Chet Haase told programmers Wednesday during a session on the new operating system at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. It'll be available at the Android developer site, he said.
"That comes out tomorrow," Haase said. "Please get started developing today."
Google has succeeded in many ways with Android. It's the top smartphone OS, and Google expects it to displace Apple's iPad to lead in tablets, too. The company also is trying to bring it to good $100 phones for developing markets. But the mobile market is about as competitive as they come, and Google isn't satisfied. The upcoming L version of Android embodies the company's ambitions to make the software look better, work better, attract more developers, and attract more users.
Google's preview approach with the L version is a marked contrast with its past approach, where it wouldn't release new versions of Android until it was done. Beta tests and preview versions are a good way to please enthusiasts. But more important, they let programmers adjust to changes faster so their apps are ready for the new look and features as soon as possible. That means the overall Android ecosystem could move faster.
So what's in the L Preview? Haase and another Android team programmer, Dan Sandler, detailed many of the changes. Here's a look:
Overhauled notifications
Google and Apple have gradually realized the lock screen shouldn't be wasted on mobile phones, and the L release vastly expands its utility -- within privacy constraints set by app developers and users who might not want to show personal data that's not protected by an unlocking authentication process.
Android L Preview introduces a new look for notifications.
"In L, you hear your phone buzz, you take it out out, turn it on, and that's it," Sandler said. "It's completely glanceable."
Notifications take the form of cards, as on the current KitKat, but use a black-on-white theme instead of the KitKat's dark look. The notifications can combine more graphical elements so users can more quickly understand things like the combination of who contacted them and what means they used. And the notifications use the depth information of the material design, with features like shadows cast on what's underlying on the screen.
Android L Preview also attempts to sort cards more intelligently, based in part on cues app developers can supply. Google introduced a new template to make it easier to build media-controller cards, the sort of thing that lets users fast-forward and pause video and audio.
The new notification system also is used inAndroid Wear for smartwatches.
Google details changes coming with notifications in Android L.
Animations and depth
The material design was inspired by the idea of a screen that had tactile features -- the kind of changing texture real-world objects have, as opposed to today's flat glassy screens. With the material design theme, developers can specify the "elevation" of an item -- how high it appears to be on the screen.
Also central to this more physically intuitive approach is animation. Buttons can ripple as they're pressed. Checkboxes can show a little splash of activity as they're tapped. And developers can specify a wide range of detailed animation behavior to control how elements bounce around, slide, expand, contract, appear, and disappear.
Better camera controls
Android L Preview lets programmers gather raw image-sensor data, which could potentially open the door to better image quality for photo enthusiasts. It also lets people capture uncompressed video data at 30 frames per second, hardware permitting, and control shutter speed, frame duration, and ISO sensitivity frame by frame.
New task switching
Android L adds finer controls to task switching. Instead of just letting people switch among apps, it'll show parts of apps -- individual documents or Web pages, for example -- so people can zero in on what they want sooner.
Cycling among those pages will use the depth and shadows of the material-design interface, too.
Google builds privacy controls into its lock-screen notifications.
For those building apps using browser technologies, an approach that can ease development of apps that span multiple operating systems, Google is moving its WebView engine to the technology used in Chrome 36.
That means developers of third-party apps will get access to hardware-accelerated WebGL graphics, the WebAudio interface for better sound handling, and the WebRTC technology for real-time audio and video chats.
Better power efficiency
A tool called Project Volta will let programmers dig into application power usage with Android's debugging tools. And the Battery Historian will show how usage changes over time.
Power usage is a critical constraint on mobile devices. The Android L Preview also will debut a new power-saving mode for people who expect to be away from a charger for a long time -- something that handset designers already offer on their own with some Android phones.
Google hopes Android L will sort notifications better.
Smarter network handling
Android L will be able to detect some network problems before they get out of hand so apps can adjust accordingly.
"It allows a graceful handoff from one link to another -- if you're about to lose Wi-Fi when it's losing its range, you can rebuild [a video] stream on cellular [networks] with no interruption to the user," Sandler said.
Better Bluetooth
Android 4.3 introduced support for Bluetooth LE, a battery-preserving version of the short-range networking standard. That let phones connect to Bluetooth devices like heart-rate monitors to gather data.
Android L Preview goes another step with Bluetooth peripheral mode, which lets an Android device send Bluetooth to another device controlling the show.
Today at Google I/O 2014, Senior Vice President of Android Sundar Pichai gave us the first taste of Android L, the next generation of Google's mobile operating system. The release is Google's first developer-only preview, and while it's not the final version of the next flavor of Android, it gives us a great look at what's next.
Google names its new Android releases after desserts and sweets, and we've already known that a treat starting with the letter L was next. It seems that Google hasn't yet landed on an official name, leaving us to still speculate if version 4.5 (or perhaps 5.0) will be named Lollipop, Lemon Bar, or something else when it undoubtedly officially debuts later this year.
Until then, there's plenty to see in Android L, so without further ado, let's take a look.
Material
Material is the new design theme and philosophy for Android. It has a minimal, more transparent design that cleans up the user interface in the operating system and Google apps. Text has more space between it, and there's a flat design through the operating system.
Material also adds updated animations, including animated check boxes and colored ripple effects when you touch the screen.
Depth with shadows
Though L has a relatively flat design, there's still areas where Google and developers can add depth. In the next version of Android, when designing a new app, developers can add shadows and natural light effects to create depth in the app.
More and brighter colors
Color has long played an important role in Android, and that is even more true in L. Google is using brighter, richer colors throughout the OS, in apps and menus.
Enhanced notifications
Notifications take on the Google Now card design aesthetic with colorful accents and white backgrounds. Android L prioritizes notifications based on what it thinks is important to you.
Heads Up
For the most important notifications, such as phone calls or battery warnings, there are new Heads Up pop-up notifications that show up over your apps at the top of the screen. They won't interrupt what you're doing, and you can interact with them to, say, take that incoming phone call. To get rid of them, just swipe them away, or swipe them up into the notification shade to save them for later.
Lockscreen notifications
Notifications also show up on your lockscreen in order to put them front and center. In order to protect your privacy, app developers can program notifications to show "public" information or "private" information, which does a great job of hiding message and email content, and more.
A public notification will show everything, while a private notification will show a message that tells you to unlock your phone to read more. Notifications for general information, such as the weather or your battery level will show up as public by default.
Multitasking changes
The old multitasking menu is getting a face lift in Android L. A new menu called "Recents" shows apps that are running in the background as a stack of cards, instead of the previous list view. You can scroll through that stack to switch between apps quickly.
Personal unlocking
Unlocking your phone gets smarter in Android L. You can still use a PIN, password, or pattern lock when you're out and about, but you can now easily unlock your device without entering your PIN or password when it's close to your personal Bluetooth device, such as a smartwatch. That means if you have the Moto 360or LG G Watch on your wrist, and pick up your Android phone, the phone knows that the watch belongs to you and automatically unlocks itself. You just need to swipe on the screen to unlock the screen.
You can also set your phone to unlock when you're in a specific location, such as your house or office. Lastly, it can unlock using your unique voice print -- meaning you can talk to your phone and recognizes your voice to unlock it.
Project Volta
Google is making more improvements to how Android and apps drain your battery. Specifically, developers get more tools to control how their apps affect the battery, including scheduling jobs, such as fetching new data, only when your phone is charging.
There's also a new Battery Saver mode for users that clocks down the CPU and turns off background data. You can turn it on manually or program it to turn on automatically when your battery drops too low. source Cnet.com
Move over WhatsApp. Here comes a revolutionary chatting app that has taken the mobile messaging to another level.
With this, you are able to send and receive messages even when you do not have an actual Internet or Wi-Fi data connection.
Yes, you read it right.
This iOS-enabled app uses Apple's Multipeer Connectivity framework essentially a peer-to-peer feature that lets you share messages with other app users nearby.
"FireChat allows the device to connect directly to others nearby using Bluetooth, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi or traditional Wi-Fi networks so you do not actually need a data connection," Micha Benoliel, CEO of Open Garden firm that developed the app was quoted as saying.
The Apple's Multipeer Connectivity APIs can be used for everything from collaborative editing and file sharing, to multiplayer gaming and sensor aggregation, said a report in wired.com.
How does it function?
The app browses for other users nearby while simultaneously broadcasting to peers that it is available to connect to. According to the company, this "Nearby" mode works best when the devices are within 30-feet.
This allows you to be invited into a "session" with multiple users. Each user has to be within range of just one member of the chat, so the mesh can spread outwards and cover a lot more range as more people join in.
Once a session invitation is accepted, you can directly communicate with those other users independent of a cellular signal or Wi-Fi access.
This creates what is called "wireless mesh network".
According to Benoliel, "Messages also get deleted as soon as you close the app so you remain anonymous."
However, in "Nearby" mode, you do not have any choice over who receives your messages they go out to anyone within range, the report added. There is also an "Everyone" mode, which sends the messages over a data connection so you can chat with friends who are not physically nearby. This is being segmented into chatrooms of 80 users each as the initial rush of downloads made it untenable to keep all users on a single chat.
Apple sold 700 million iOS devices by last October. Many are already using the latest Multipeer Connectivity-supporting version of iOS.
Within a week of its launch, FireChat has been being downloaded from the App Store more than 100,000 times a day. soource by NDTV.gadgets
VLC now available for Windows 8 one of the best multimedia players has finally come to Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT. A few hours ago that they have posted on the official blog announcing a beta version, but perfectly functional.
VLC for Windows 8 development has been paid thanks to a round of funding on Kickstarter that got nearly $80,000. The application is tailored to the interface ModernUI that characterized the new generation of Windows and can be downloaded directly from the app store.
The usual VLC in other systems notice less fluid than usual operation and some minor problems to work with subtitles, while taking into account that we are talking about a beta, developers work is more than notable. A year later, Windows 8 users can now enjoy great VLC. this is given in VLC's one of the blogpost
Today, the first Beta of VLC for WinRT is getting deployed on the store.
As many of you know, the road to come to this point has been long... Very long.
I've been driving or helping some ports of VLC on mobile, but this port has been the hardest, by an order of magnitude.
I'll speak a bit more about the lateness of this port, another time. Today, I'll introduce a bit to this application.
Features
This application, version 0.2.0, is a BETA stage of the port of libVLC on WinRT. WinRT is the runtime of Windows 8/8.1 Metro/ModernUI, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox 1.
As this is a beta, some features are still not perfectly stable, but we are working on that. We thought we should share it with the users, so that people could test and help us.
This application:
works on Windows 8.0 and 8.1: too many people are still on 8.0, so we had to use that. This decreases the stability of the application, though...
is compiled for Intel x86 CPUs: Windows RT version will follow as soon as we are able to compile it. ARM version will also apply to Windows Phone.
plays all video and audio formats of VLC, including MKV, Ogg and Mov files or FLAC and MPC;
supports the same codecs as the VLC application for desktop, from MPEG-1 to H.265, through WMV3 and VC-1;
supports multiple-audio tracks selection;
supports embedded subtitles;
supports Background Audio playback;
features a easy-to-navigate but complete UI, notably for audio browsing;
supports Live Tiles!
supports removable storage and DLNA servers.
However, there are a few limitations:
This app is currently slow, and is slower than VLC for desktop for video decoding and has no hardware acceleration;
Subtitles support is not very good yet, and notably it only supports embedded subtitles; this is our major point of focus for now.
Audio does not seem to work in all configurations;
Playlists and streams are not supported in the UI (they are present in the core)
It's clearly not as stable as it should be.
We are working on all those points, but notably on subtitles and audio quality and stability. Since we now have a release, it will be easier to do releases quite often, as soon as we can.
We also have longer terms goal to work on, and we'll share them when we know more
We hope you like this application, and if you don't, we'll fix that soon
Last year, designer Dave Hakkens positioned the concept of a modular smartphone--or Phonebloks--as a way to cut down on the electronic waste of handsets. Motorola would go on to work with Phonebloks to eventually bring the idea to fruition, with the end result being Google's Project Ara. And according to a report from Time, these customizable phones could be out next year for an incredibly affordable price point.
"The smartphone is one of the most empowering and intimate objects in our lives," said Paul Eremenko, who heads up Project Ara for Google ATAP. "Yet most of us have little say in how the device is made, what it does, and how it looks." Interestingly, the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group was one sector Google kept following the sale of Motorola to Lenovo.
Google thinks Project Ara could offer an entry point into the smartphone market for emerging regions, citing the over five billion people in the world who are still without one. According to the Time report, Google wants Ara smartphones on the market by 2015, for as little as $50.
On January 29, Google announced that it had agreed to sell Motorola, its phone-manufacturing business, to Chinese electronics giant Lenovo. Thus concluded the company’s brief, unprofitable foray into smartphone hardware, which began when it revealed plans to acquire Motorola Mobility in August, 2011.
Granted, the $50 handset will only have base features--perhaps even lacking cellular functionality--but it's still an interesting starting point. Since users could swap out the modules for better features at whim, Ara has the potential to be a fully customizable, truly affordable smartphone.
The current plans call for three different sizes of modular smartphones, from the $50 mini up to a large phablet. And given the opportunity for unique modules, there's no telling what developers may dream up. Google will host a series of developer conferences for Ara, beginning in April. But anyone can check the devices out, thanks to a free live-stream.
Except that it didn’t really end there. It turned out that Google was holding onto one organization within Motorola: the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group. Headed by Regina Dugan, the former director of the U.S. Defense Department’s fabled Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ATAP aims to bring the same approach to mobile-gadget innovation that DARPA used to kickstart the Internet, satellite navigation, stealth fighters and other technologies that started small and eventually mattered a lot.
In retrospect, it’s completely logical that Google would choose to retain ATAP. The technologies and projects it specializes in are the wildly audacious ideas Google likes to call moonshots. The company already has another group devoted to such efforts — Google X, which is working on Google Glass, self-driving cars, broadband balloons and more — but it’s hard to imagine it handing off any moonshots in progress to Lenovo or anyone else.
Among the ATAP initiatives that have been announced, one in particular is quintessentially Google-y. It’s Project Ara, which aims to reinvent the smartphone by breaking it down into modules that can be assembled and customized in a limitless number of configurations. The company first disclosed that the project existed on October 29 of last year, when it released some intriguing photos but little in the way of concrete details. Today, it’s lifting the veil further as it prepares for an Ara developer conference it’s holding at Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum on April 15-16. A year or so from now, it hopes to have a product on the market.
Google announced a new research project Thursday aimed at bringing 3D technology to smartphones, for potential applications such as indoor mapping, gaming and helping blind people navigate.
The California tech giant said its "Project Tango" would provide prototypes of its new smartphone to outside developers to encourage the writing of new applications.
Project leader Johnny Lee said the goal of the project, which incorporates robotics and vision-processing technology, is "to give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion."
"What if you could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping?" Google said on its Project Tango web page.
"What if directions to a new location didn't stop at the street address? What if you never again found yourself lost in a new building? What if the visually impaired could navigate unassisted in unfamiliar indoor places? What if you could search for a product and see where the exact shelf is located in a super-store?"
The technology could also be used for "playing hide-and-seek in your house with your favorite game character, or transforming the hallways into a tree-lined path."
Smartphones are equipped with sensors which make over 1.4 million measurements per second, updating the positon and rotation of the phone.
Partners in the project include researchers from the University of Minnesota, George Washington University, German tech firm Bosch and the Open Source Robotics Foundation, among others.
Another partner is California-based Movidius, which makes vision-processor technology for mobile and portable devices and will provide the processor platform.
Movidius said in a statement the goal was "to mirror human vision with a newfound level of depth, clarity and realism on mobile and portable connected devices."
"Google has paved the future direction for smart mobile vision systems and we're excited to be working with a company that shares our vision to usher in the next wave of applications that fundamentally alter how a mobile device is used to experience the world around us," said Remi El-Ouazzane, chief executive of Movidius.
"Project Tango is truly a groundbreaking platform and we look forward to seeing the innovation the developer community achieves," he added.
