GOOGLE BIG FAILURE IS BEING RESURRECTED

Google announced that it is updating the much-maligned product with a new version, known as Google Glass Enterprise Edition.

In a blog post discussing the new version, Jay Kothari, project lead at Google Glass, noted the many cases in the workplace where Google Glass is already helping.

“GE was one of the first businesses to experience the benefits of Glass in the workplace,” Kothari wrote, adding that there are more than 50 companies using Glass, including Boeing, Volkswagen, DHL and a host of others.

“Based on the positive feedback we’ve received from these customers in a special program we’ve been running for the past two years, we’re now making Glass Enterprise Edition available to more businesses through our network of partners.

The latest version of the wearable headset is getting some upgrades, including a bump in the camera. It now has an eight megapixel camera, up from five megapixels. It also will have a longer battery life, a better processor, an indicator for video recording and improved Wi-Fi speeds.

It also looks radically different, with Glass EE now being decoupled from integrated frames so it can work with all types of eyewear, including industrial safety glasses.

Domino's Franchise Trainer Stewart Lyne models a new Google Glass in the kitchen.
Domino's is trailing Google Glass for its employees as a way to speed up efficiency and remain connected at work.

“The new units cost around the same as the earlier Explorer Edition for developers and consumers — $1300 to $1500 — but are now optimised for different scenarios, with better networking and security support and more flexible options for frames including prescription lenses,” Jackdaw Research analyst Jan Dawson said in comments obtained by Fox News.

Regarding Google’s push towards the enterprise, Mr Dawson said he has “always felt like this space was a much better fit for Glass-like products than the consumer market.

By reducing the amount of back and forth workers have to do accessing checklists, viewing instruction manuals or sending photos from tablets or laptops as they assemble machines, Glass has reduced machinery production time by 25 per cent and inspection times by 30 per cent.

In 2012, Google unveiled the first version of Google Glass, garnering widespread attention, but it soon fizzled as a consumer product because of privacy concerns and its unattractive aesthetics.

People who wore it were termed “glassholes” because of the creepy nature of using the device. Google went so far as to write a best practices for using it, including listing the “dos” and “don’ts” of using it in public, even mentioning the term “glasshole” in the post.

Sources :
FOX

END OF AN ERA FOR MICROSOFT AS GOOGLE MERCILESSLY TAKES OVER

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It’s the end of an era: Android has overtaken Windows as the world’s most popular operating system, marginally edging out Microsoft’s software.The margin is small and mainly down to the dominance of Android in Asia, according to the latest figures from web analytics company StatCounter. However, it does indicate a shift in the market that could mean difficulties for Microsoft.

StatCounter said Android internet usage showed a 37.93 per cent share across desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile, just ahead of Windows at 37.94 per cent.However, in Ireland, Windows remains top of the operating systems, although its share has fallen from 44 per cent a year ago to 36.3 per cent in march 2017. Android has climbed to 28 per cent from 22.5 per cent over the same period, while Apple’s iOS comes in third with 26 per cent, up from 22 per cent a year ago.

Asian market

The growth of smartphones and the decline of the PC are two factors credited with the change, but the impact of the Asian market is also a major factor. Android has a 52.2 per cent share of the market there, compared with Windows on 29.2 per cent. That compares with North America and Europe, where Windows remains the top operating system by a sizable margin.This is a milestone in technology history and the end of an era. It marks the end of Microsoft’s leadership worldwide of the OS market which it has held since the 1980s. It also represents a major breakthrough for Android which held just 2.4 per cent of global internet usage share only five years ago.

In the desktop PC and laptop market, Windows still dominates, with an 84 per cent share.Windows won the desktop war but the battlefield moved on said Cullen. It will be difficult for Microsoft to make inroads in mobile but the next paradigm shift might give it the opportunity to regain dominance.StatCounter bases its data on more than 15 billion page views per month to more than 2.5 million websites.

Sources:
http://gs.statcounter.com/press/android-overtakes-windows-for-first-time

GOOGLE DRIVE TO BACKUP YOUR ENTIRE PC

      

Google is turning Drive into a much more robust backup tool. Soon, instead of files having to live inside of the Drive folder, Google will be able to monitor and backup files inside of any folder you point it to.

That can include your desktop, your entire documents folder, or other more specific locations.The backup feature will come out later this month, on June 28th, in the form of a new app called Backup and Sync. It sounds like the Backup and Sync app will replace both the standard Google Drive app and the Google Photos Backup app, at least in some cases.

Google is recommending that regular consumers download the new app once it’s out, but it says that business users should stick with the existing Drive app for now.It’s not clear exactly how much you’ll be able to do with the expanded backup feature.

You’ll presumably be able to open and edit some common file types within Drive, as you’ve already been able to. But it’s not clear if you’ll be able to sync those files back down to multiple other computers, using Drive as an intermediary.All of those files will very likely count toward your Google Drive storage limit, too. This will be a very quick way of hitting that 15GB cap on free accounts.

Still, it’s a smart move by Google and a pretty handy feature. There have been requests for Dropbox to add something like this for ages, and it’s yet to get around to it. Instead, like Drive, people have always had to store files directly in the app’s local folder. For anyone looking for a bit more flexibility in their syncing apps, Google seems like it’s about to become the winning option.

sources:

http://fortune.com/2017/06/15/google-drive-back-up-computer/

WHY GOOGLE IS SUDDENLY OBSESSED WITH YOUR PHOTOS

Right now the company is feasting on photos and videos being uploaded through its surprisingly popular app Google Photos. The cloud-storage service, salvaged from the husk of the struggling social network Google+ in 2015, now has 500 million monthly active users adding 1.2 billion photos per day.

At the company’s annual I/O developers conference, Google touted Photos as a signature platform getting a bevy of valuable updates. Users will soon be able to automatically share all their uploaded photos with a loved one, or filter which specific photos are auto-shared by date or topic. A new Suggested Sharing feature will use facial recognition to prompt users to send photos of their friends directly to them, similar to Facebook’s Moments app.But the question remains: Why is Google offering such a feature-rich product that doesn’t appear to be readily monetizable, outside of the few print photo books the company plans to sell?

The simplest answer is that the company wants to keep people within its all-encompassing ecosystem. Today’s tech giants now offer to serve as caretakers to our digital lives across a suite of services in exchange for access to our personal information.Even if Google doesn’t make any money directly from something that it offers, it’s still gathering data.What more data could Google possibly need? The search giant has effectively achieved its longstanding goal of “organizing the world’s information,” if you consider only the written word. But even cofounder Larry Page has acknowledged .

Google Photos, especially now that it’s been fine-tuned for sharing, is a back door into the social networking and chat functionalities that Google has been trying and failing to pitch to customers for the last decade. While we allow the company to passively track us through platforms like Chrome and Maps, Google Photos may be the first Google product that persuades people to actively share their personal information with the company and the masse since Gmail.These are powerful breakthroughs that seem likely to accelerate the pace of technological change. But it’s important to remember they are being spearheaded by a company whose primary objective is to sell targeted advertising. 

Once a Google product has gone through enough iterations vacuuming up enough data to feel like a human necessity, it inevitably must also become a money spigot, whether it’s in the form of promoted destinations clogging up Google Maps or your Google Home playing a Beauty and the Beast commercial unprompted.A photo album used to be a photo album. Now it’s a searchable database that is self-aware enough to infer human relationships.

 What will it be tomorrow, and who will pay for it? That’s the question to ask whenever Google or one of its peers shows off a new, too-good-to-be-free product.Sergey Brin says that Google wants to be the third half of your brain. But now think about it: Do you really want the third half of your brain to make a living by showing you ads? I don’t.