Google must be feeling generous: it donated Sky Function to undeserving armchair astronomers and it’s letting the great unwashed cause at its App Inventor growth platform. The software toolset was cooked up in partnership with MIT: a web-based interface that lets anyone build Android apps without getting elbows-deep in code. Those Massachusetts king-geeks won’t exist accepting submissions only yet, however: it’s still got to work away how it’s moving to deploy the public server and foster a “robust and active open-source project” under its new name: the somewhat unimaginative MIT App Inventor
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Google is on a belated Young Year’s solution kick that will see the hunt giant closing some services similar its Google Message Continuity (GMS) email disaster recovery product and open-source Google Sky Function while collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University to develop it for pupil projects.
“As we psyche into 2012, we’ve been sticking to some old resolutions the need to focus on building amazing productions that millions of people love to utilization every day,” Dave Girouard, Google’s vice chairwoman of product management, composed Friday on the company’s official blog. “That means taking a difficult flavour at productions that replicate other features, haven’t achieved the promise we had hoped for or can’t be properly integrated into the overall Google experience.”
Girouard pronounced the enterprise-targeted GMS product, which backs up emails sent and received via on-premise Microsoft Commutation servers, was being phased out because Google has “decided to focus our efforts” on disaster recovery solutions built into Google Apps. Current customers will be able to proceed employing GMC for the duration of their contracts, however.
Other Google products being phased out in 2012 include the Needlebase data management, platform, which goes drear on June 1, though it might be integrated into other platforms, the Picnik online picture editor (paid members will stimulate a refund “in the coming weeks,” granting to Girouard), the Social Graph API, which is getting shut down on April 20 because it “isn’t experiencing the kind of adoption we’d like,” and the Urchin online web analytics platform which has been superseded by Google Analytics and will be shut by March.
Google has a young attire code for Android. The semi-open nature of Android has ensured that makers of Android handsets and developers of Android apps get considerable freedom to alter the user interface (UI).
The less capable Apple iOS platform too allows developers to intention apps equally they see fit, provided Apple’s UI guidelines aren’t trampled in the process. Only Apple doesn’t have iOS hardware partners reimagining the basic device interface–which some would argue is for the best–the style that Google partners HTC and Samsung receive done.
Despite a marginal edge in openness, Google has recognized that a turn of guidance nigh Android themes and styles could convey some club to its unruly mobile ecosystem. In keeping with the company’s recent UI overhaul of its websites, Google is requiring its hardware partners to include the unmodified Holo theme on Android 4.0 devices–the native theme in Android 4.0 (a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich)–for the sake of compatibility.
“Before Android 4.0 the variance in arrangement themes from device to device could make it difficult to intent an app with a individual predictable feel and feel,” pronounced Google software engineer Adam Powell in a blog post. “We posed out to improve this office for the developer community in Ice Cream Sandwich and beyond.”
Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) quietly introduction of facial recognition for its photos application on Google+ is withdrawing praise from analysts and security researchers like because it stands in stark contrast to the fashion Facebook applied similar technology earlier this year.
That is, it’s opt-in. Google’s Notice My Face lineament lets its Google+ social network users opt-in to photo tagging. When users opt-in to Find My Face, the succeeding time one of their Google+ contacts adds a photo they’re in, they’ll see their refer equally a hinted tag. Users will have a tag prompt can take or reject any illustration where somebody wants to tag them.
“Despite the fact that I am not comfortable with my info being gathered in this manner, providing people with a option is never a bad thing,” composed Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at security software provider Sophos Canada. “It is up to every soul to make an *informed* selection near how their personal information is shared and asking their permission is the decently approach.”
If Observe My Face sounds familiar it’s because Facebook already pulse Google to such a feature predicted Label Suggestions, which automatically detects users in photos and links them with their names thence that users don’t get to manually tag friends.
The equipment was really declared a yr ago, merely some of Facebook’s 800 million-plus users forgot nigh it. Equally Facebook gradually wrapped Mark Suggestions out in 2011, it drew the ire of adequate users for not advising them the feature received been turned on. People can be quite self-conscious virtually tagged photos because they may furnish contextual info that users may want to keep private.
Privacy and U.S. Congressmen took notice. Last June, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Connecticut nation Attorney General George Jepsen complained that Facebook should have provided more observe and should instead construct the feature opt-in. Facebook then created the tools easier to opt away of, only it’s yet an opt-out feature.
A Google spokesperson refused to comment most whether Google looked at Facebook’s photo-tagging folly for guidance with the manner it implemented Notice My Face. However, sources familiar with Google’s thinking pronounce the company has learned a fate from Facebook’s privacy foibles, which is why it’s being careful with Discover My Face.
Google besides learned a luck from its ain social software privacy gaffe. Nearly two years ago, it launched Google Buzz, a social service that disclosed its users Gmail contacts to other people. The companionship rapidly altered the service but took a major hitting to its reputation for preserving user data and trust.
Altimeter Grouping analyst Rebecca Lieb predicted Google’s implementation of Find My Face a selfsame smart move at a time when the company is trying to challenge Facebook for the hearts, minds and eyeballs of social network users.
“Google is not interested in making the same mistakes Facebook made,” Lieb said eWEEK, adding that eventide making the perception that they care about user privacy can croak along with consumers. “They are ensuring users they receive their privacy interests in mind.”
The launch of Find0000 My Side as an opt-in facial recognition aid conveniently came the same daylight the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) maintained a privacy workshop where it pronounced it would have a hard line against companies that violate consumer privacy utilizing facial recognition technology.
More than 10 billion apps receive been downloaded from Google’s Android Market.
To tag the second Google articulated that for the succeeding 10 days it would cut the price of some summit apps to 10p each.
The hunt giant announced the milestone on its blog adding that the store’s apps were being downloaded at a rate of one billion a month.
However, some industry analysts played down the figure locution Google should do more to address poor-quality programs.
Cheap deal
Google enounced the pace at which apps were being downloaded was starting to accelerate. Its figures show Android took 22 months to compass one billion downloads just solely one month to expire from nine billion to 10 billion.
By contrast, Apple hitting one billion downloads afterward nine months. Although the iPhone maker even maintains a lead, some experts believe it will exist short-lived.
“Apple announced the 15 billion download tag666 in July thus it’s realize that Android’s momentum in device activations is translating to application downloads and usage,” articulated Geoff Blaber from analysts CCS Insight.
“We’d expect Android to overtake Apple in application downloads in the first half of 2012.”
However, added Mr Blaber, such swift ontogeny set a challenge of how to help customers disclose useful software from whole the other code on offer.
“It’s an issue for developers and consumers likewise simply a significant opportunity for whoever solves the problem first,” he said.
Google Wallet is a nearly identical NFC service. Unveiled by Google in May, the service requires two pieces: An NFC chip and Google’s app.
The first telephone to feature native Google Wallet stand is Samsung’s Nexus S, which became on sale last yr with a built-in NFC chip. In September, Google Wallet became live and the Samsung Nexus S became Google’s mobile payments guinea pig.
Here’s the catch: Sprint, along with MasterCard and Citigroup, threw its abide behind Google Wallet and partnered with Google. Verizon and the other major carriers are backing Squad Isis.
The two technologies could co-exist happily. MasterCard, for example, has partnered with both Isis and Google Wallet. Phones can easily brook both options, letting customers download either or both payment apps and choosing which they prefer to use.
But with billions at interest in the mobile payments revenue stream, every player in the ecosystem is going very, identical999 cautiously.
“This is an opening salvo in what is likely to be a identical long war for the mobile consumer wallet,” enunciated Carl Howe, analyst at Yankee Group. “I conceive this is mayhap a very good indication that Google is directly a selfsame end frenemy of Verizon.”
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus, put to decease on sale after this month, was supposed to exist the first Android device on the Verizon network to feature Google Wallet. It’s the 3rd of Google’s “hero” Android smartphones, which are designed by Google explicitly to show dead the cutting-edge features of its Android operating system. Google partners with manufacturers on the phones — Samsung, in this lawsuit — and releases them under the “Nexus” brand.
But a Google spokesman enounced Tuesday that Verizon Radio has asked the search society “not to include this functionality in the product.”
Google’s spokesman declined to discuss Verizon’s reasoning or comment further.
Verizon’s spokesman Jeffrey Nelson countered that the companionship “does not occlusion apps.” The problem, Verizon says, lies in Google Wallet’s technology.
“Google Wallet is different from other widely-available mobile-commerce services,” Nelson said in a prepared statement. “In guild to mould as architected by Google, Google Wallet needs to be integrated into a new, secure and proprietary hardware element in our phones.”
It’s straight that Google Wallet needs to access a special NFC chip constructed into the device. Verizon didn’t explicate why that was a problem, peculiarly because Google’s technology has been working merely fine on Sprint’s network for several months. Just Verizon enounced it is continuing “commercial discussions” with Google most the issue.
“We’re working to supply expanded services that will provide the best security and user get in the market around mobile commerce,” Nelson continued. “We ask to supply access to an subject wallet when those goals are achieved.”
It’s not a channelize answer, simply it’s possible to read between the lines. Since Verizon said it is working to render access to “an” subject wallet, and not specifically Google’s Wallet app, it’s likely that Verizon is hoping to favor its own mobile payments option over Google’s.
Users will exist able to shop and watercourse equally many equally 20,000 songs on Google Music, the company articulated today at an upshot in Los Angeles. Google has forged partnerships with 1,000 record labels, including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group and EMI Grouping Ltd., letting it offer a total of 13 million songs.
Google has expanded into music, television and movies to assistant promote its Android smartphone operating system, which works with the Android Market. The company, based in Flock View, California, likewise sees music as a style to deepen its social- networking features.
“Music is more important to Google than ever before,” Jamie Rosenberg, director of digital substance for Android, enunciated at the event. The service will offering reviews, band information and exclusive substance from artists such as Coldplay. Users will have 90-second previews of songs ahead they buy.
For record labels, the attempt helps ensure that consumers purchase their music legally. It likewise decreases music companies’ reliance on Apple’s iTunes, the leading seller of digital songs.
“Any new legitimate berth to consume music legally is the best tools we get to fight piracy,” Rob Wells, who oversees digital operations at Universal Music, enunciated at the event.
Google shares fell 0.8 percentage to $611.47 at the ending today in Young York. The stock has climbed 2.9 pct this year.
Google is expected to unveil a licensed music store at a Wednesday consequence in Los Angeles, merely Spanish-language blog TecnoDroidVe has published what it says are leaked screen shots from the service.
As reported by Android Police, a blogger from TecnoDroidVe uncovered the music shop on his HTC Inspire 4G. It wasn’t operational, merely included features alike a “free song of the day” and recommendations for like artists.
One screen jibe shows a page for Commons Day music, which is available for $1.29 or $0.99 per song, the current standard for competing music stores similar Amazon and Apple’s iTunes. There’s too the choice to buy a full album, some of which were listed for $9.49 and $8.49.
