Google Glass Goes "Out and About" at Foundation Fighting Blindness in San Francisco

I've been absolutely salivating over the idea of PC, Smartphone, or whatever in a pair of glasses for over a decade now. I even blogged about Google's foray into this era just a little while back.

Now it appears that the leaks from the Googleplex are more than PR pie in the sky. Otherwise, why would co-founder Sergey Brinn be wearing a prototype at a public fund raiser for blindness recently.

This is all part of Project Glass which the link will provide details of.

I want to get my hands and or temples and or eyeballs on one of these asap

111

Google Rebrands Cloud Strategy as "Google Play"

The Cloud just keeps evolving, but rest assured, it's here to stay. In fact the evolution of The Cloud is actually a good thing for us as users. It means that companies that are providing cloud services are changing things in hopes of making the concept easier to use in hopes of solidifying user bases and hoping to lure new users.

The latest evolution is from Google. The company, as recently as a few days ago, had the Android Market, the Google eBookstore, and Google Music. They all worked just fine, but it was a bit confusing for some users and a bit time consuming� even for power users who understood what as going on and where all the different things were located.

So, in order to make it easier to use and easier to find the things you might be looking for, Google has now consolidated all of those places into the one branded place of "Google Play".

I love the idea of simplicity and I also love the idea of all my stuff in one place. It's just a flat out better solution. This is especially true when one considers that there are a huge (and growing) number of users accessing Google Play on Android based smart phones and tablets.

From the Google Blog:

With Google Play you can:

• Store up to 20,000 songs for free and buy millions of new tracks
• Download more than 450,000 Android apps and games
• Browse the world�s largest selection of eBooks
• Rent thousands of your favorite movies, including new releases and HD titles

Starting today, Android Market, Google Music and the Google eBookstore will become part of Google Play. On your Android phone or tablet, we�ll be upgrading the Android Market app to the Google Play Store app over the coming days. Your videos, books and music apps (in countries where they are available) will also be upgraded to Google Play Movies, Google Play Books and Google Play Music apps. The music, movies, books and apps you�ve purchased will continue to be available to you through Google Play�simply log in with your Google account like always.

To celebrate, we�ll be offering a different album, book, video rental and Android app at a special price each day for the next week in our �7 Days to Play� sale. In the U.S., today�s titles include the collection of top 40 hits Now That's What I Call Music 41, the popular game Where's My Water, the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the movie Puncture for just 25 cents each. In addition, you'll find great collections of hip-hop, rock and country albums for $3.99 all week, detective novels from $2.99, some of our editorial team's favorite movies from 99 cents, and our favorite apps from 49 cents.

In the U.S., music, movies, books and Android apps are available in Google Play. In Canada and the U.K., we�ll offer movies, books and Android apps; in Australia, books and apps; and in Japan, movies and apps. Everywhere else, Google Play will be the new home for Android apps. Our long-term goal is to roll out as many different types of content as possible to people around the world, and we�ll keep adding new content to keep it fresh.

To learn more, head over to play.google.com/about or keep up with the latest on ourGoogle+ page. If you�re headed to Austin later this week for South by Southwest, come to the Google Village to see Google Play in action. We can�t wait for you to try Google Play and experience a simpler way to manage your entertainment.

Posted by Jamie Rosenberg, Director of Digital Content

Google Rumored to be Preparing Competition for Siri Later This Year

One of the big selling points for the Apple iPhone 4S was Siri, the virtual assistant.

Apple laid on the Siri advertising thick over the 1st quarter the 4S was available and it seemed to work with the company selling 37 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2012.

Never one to be outdone, Google has been working on a similar program rumored to be simply called "Assistant". The word is that the program will have access to Google's search engine and also integrate services such as Gmail and Google+.

Also, Google is much more app and developer friendly than the notoriously closed iOS so there may be lots of Google Adroid apps to take advantage of it as well.

There is no rumored release date, but you've got to think that if the word is starting to leak out, it can't be far away. My bet is we'll see it this summer.

A Major Update to the Google+ iOS App with a Cool Photo Backup Included

Google+ has been out for a while now. In case you aren't familiar with it, in a nutshell it is Google's answer to Facebook. It goes deeper than that, but for the overall purpose of comparing, I think that sums it well for a short & sweet definition.

I've had a Google+ account for a while now and I like it. I've never been one to spend much time on social networks though. My Twitter feed is about the extent of my social stuff, however it's easy to see why Google+ was created since so many folks spend so much time with social media.

Of course one of the big ways that people connect nowadays is on the go. The smartphone has pretty much become the center of our lives. So, it's only natural for purveyor's of said social networks to make sure we can access them while we're on the go.

So it's a wise move that Google+ exists in the smartphone space. There has a been an app for the network available for a while now, but this post will deal with the most recent update and its special photo backup bonus.

The app has been available for a bit on the Android platform, but for those users with iPhones, it's been a waiting game� until now.

It seems that by installing the latest update to your iOS device you also get your photos and videos backed up to a private album on your Google+ account. Cloud storage of your visuals that happens in the background� automatically!

While there are other services that provide the same thing, I still like the idea of redundant backups and this is a good one. Download the app and check it out.

For the full story, here are the details from Anton Lopyrev of Google.

Google Releases Chrome Browser for Android

I've got to hand it to Google. They've made themselves very important by creating some amazing things and just giving them away. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Voice, and the Chrome browser just to name a few. When it comes to Chrome, if you aren't using it, you really should consider it. Chrome has become my browser of choice and i have it installed on every computer I own.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to have Chrome on my Android devcies� even though Google is the brains behind Android. So I was thrilled with the announcement that Google has now created a version of Chrome to run on Android devices. The only drawback is that it will currently only be running on devcies running the Ice Cream Sandwich updated version of Android, but hey, baby steps right? Here's the info from Google:

Introducing Chrome for Android

Tuesday, February 7, 2012 | 9:38 AM

In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We�re excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you�ve come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.

Speed

With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast�Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.

Simplicity

Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you�re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.

One of the biggest pains of mobile browsing is selecting the correct link out of several on a small-screen device. Link Preview does away with hunting and pecking for links on a web page by automatically zooming in on links to make selecting the precise one easier.

And as with Chrome on desktop, we built Chrome for Android with privacy in mind from the beginning, including incognito mode for private browsing and fine-grained privacy options (tap menu icon, �Settings,� and then �Privacy�).

Sign in

You can now bring your personalized Chrome experience with you to your Android phone or tablet. If you sign in to Chrome on your Android device, you can:

• View open tabs: Access the tabs you left open on your computer (also signed into Chrome)�picking up exactly where you left off.


• Get smarter suggestions: If you visit a site often on your computer, you'll also get an autocomplete suggestion for it on your mobile device, so you can spend less time typing.


• Sync bookmarks: Conveniently access your favorite sites no matter where you are or which device you�re using.

Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market, in select countries and languages for phonesand tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. We�re eager to hear your feedback. Finally, we look forward to working closely with the developer community to create a better web on a platform that defines mobile.

Google Removes 3rd Party Reviews...

When I was a kid, there was a pretty popular commercial for Chiffon Margarine where an actress playing "Mother Nature" was given a tub of something to taste. She immediately identified it as "my sweet, creamy butter". When told it was Chiffon and that "it tastes so good, it even fooled you", the actress immediately looked angry. The promo ended with thunder, lightening, and the actress uttering the now famous tagline "it's not nice to fool mother nature".

The same can be said for a certain search engine company in Mountain View, California. You really don't want to anger The Big G... especially if they are doing you a favor.

It seems that some rating sites began to complain that Google was taking their data and displaying it without their permission. These rankings were being displayed on Google's "Places" pages or when you searched on a location on Google such as (in my case) "Lee's Summit Dentist". In the past when this type of search was performed, a map of the general area was displayed along with the names of the business type. Next to the names would be a series of stars showing the average rating amassed by sites such as Demandforce, Yelp, Vitals, Angie's List, or CitySearch.

So, when many of these types of sites began to complain of the way Google was using their data, Google simply quite using it and quit listing the stars for most businesses as they had been.

This is interesting to me since I wouldn't go to a bunch of individual sites to see their rankings of a business, but I might check out a business on Google and then go to these other sites to check the business rankings or to read some of the reviews. So, in my opinion, these sites sort of "shot themselves in the foot" by their complaints of Google using their data without permission. By doing so, they forced Google to choose not to include this data and, consequently, eliminated a major way that consumers learned of the sites in the first place.

It's not nice to fool mother nature...

Google Opens Web Store for Android Apps - Accessible from your Computer

In an attempt to keep up with Apple and to also give their developers more exposure, Google recently announced the launch of their web based store for applications.

The problem for developers has been the best apps are the ones that are featured on a user's phone and so the small amount of screen real estate has limited the exposure some developers have been getting.

Apple also has had the tremendous advantage of the App Store which users can access from their computers and buy apps for their Apple devices.

So... by allowing users of Android mobile devices to be able to browse & purchase over the web from their computers is being hailed as the next jump forward for both Android developers & users.

Look also for more Android tablets to be arriving soon. Super Bowl viewers got a chance to see the Motorola Xoom advertised last night.