Read original story on: ArsTechnica
The smart thermostat Nest just got even smarter: Nest owners can now use Google’s eponymous app on iOS or Android to easily control their home’s temperature, similar to how they used Nest’s own app. They can also use Google’s voice commands to change or set their temperature before even getting home. More impressively, Google Now will offer up suggestions for temperature settings based on user location and time of the day.
Read original story on: TechCrunch
It looks like Google’s Chromecast has a new competitor as Amazon introduced the Fire TV Stick today. It is a $39 dongle that works just like Chromecast, currently priced at $35. To sweeten the deal, Amazon also throws in a free month of Prime membership, while also offering it at a discounted $19 to existing Prime subscribers. It seems to be a serious challenger to Chromecast in terms of both features and value, and we won’t be too surprised if we see an Apple TV Stick soon.
Update 10/30: The ship date for Fire TV Stick has been pushed back to January.
Read original story on: Lifehacker
With news of security breaches popping up everyday (this week so far: credit card breach at Staples stores and targeted phone system hacking), strengthening digital security has become a growing concern among consumers. To address this issue, Google is now launching a two-step verification feature with Security Key, a physical USB security key that only works after verifying the login site is truly a Google website. Such a move clearly indicates Google’s intention to move away from the single password standard for consumer security. Whether the users would be willing to sacrifice a little convenience for added security measures, however, remains to be seen.
Source: ReadWrite
Google Now, Siri, and Cortana were each given 3,000 voice queries in a new study to compare the capability of these three major voice-activated AIs. Google Now emerged as the clear champion with 88% of the questions handled correctly. Siri took the second-place with a 53% success rate, while Microsoft’s newly introduced Cortana finished with a mere 40%. Looks like both Siri and Cortana still have a lot of room for improvement.
Sinking its teeth deeper into eHealth, Google is now testing a new feature in its Google search results that prompts users searching for clinical symptoms to connect with a doctor via video-chat. Seeing a doctor on demand online isn’t exactly new, but given Google’s dominance in web search, it seems set to make eHealthcare a common practice and, judging by Google’s wording of the prompt, a potentially profitable one at that.
The Zoological Society of London has teamed up with Google to use TV white spaces (vacant frequencies in the TV spectrum) to livestream footage of selected zoo animals on YouTube. The main aim of the trial is to figure out how white space transmissions could be used by conservationists out in the field. If successful, dormant spectrum could be used to provide Internet connectivity in hard-to-serve locations.
Last week, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp sent an open letter to the European Union outlining anti-trust concerns it has about Google, mainly criticizing the search giant for exploiting its dominant market position to stifle competition while also being a “platform for piracy”.
This week, Google fired back with its own open letter, highlighting its efforts in constantly downgrading the search rankings of piracy sites. Google also rebutted the accusation of “speech domination” by citing the huge numbers of readers going directly to News Corp sites or via social network referrals.
In addition, Google claims to have plenty of competitors in many specialty areas, including Amazon for product search; Kayak and Expedia for flights; and Yelp and TripAdvisor for local information. The various claims and counter-claims highlight the rapidly shifting balance of power between technology companies and traditional media companies in digitally distributing media content.
With its grand entry into the healthcare industry, Apple looks to leverage its enormous consumer brand popularity and loyalty into building a centralized “data hub” for healthcare. But its primary competitor Google, with its own Android healthcare apps, could eat into Apple’s share with its popular apps, enterprise-friendly approach, and budget-conscious pricing.
As valid as these reasons are, there is one factor that cannot be ignored: data security and privacy. Google has long been known for monetizing whatever data it can obtain. Apple, on the other hand, has recently updated its privacy policy, emphasizing that it is “not in the business of collecting data” for marketing purposes. Not only does this make iOS easier to comply with health privacy laws than Android, it also helps put patients and healthcare practitioners at ease.
There have been a number of trials of commercialized drone usage, so it is refreshing to see Google coming up with a new purpose for drones: the tech giant is reportedly planning to test solar-powered drones in remote areas of New Mexico in hope of developing a system that “may eventually be used to provide Internet connections in remote areas or help monitor environmental damage“.
In an interesting turn of events, Amazon has officially closed a $970 million deal to acquire Twitch, after Google apparently dropped its billion-dollar bid a month ago. At first glance, the ecommerce giant and the live-streaming game platform have little in common, but a closer examination reveals that Amazon has been courting the gaming market for a while. It makes perfect sense: Twitch was increasingly running into licensing issues as it grew in size, and it needed a big partner to support its development, making Amazon a good fit.
If Google had closed the deal, Twitch would have predictably become YouTube’s “little brother.” At Amazon, however it has the chance to become the video mainstay due to its lack of user-generated or live video platform. And now that the acquisition has been made official, the online video landscape could be radically shifted.
