Google Demonstrates Google Glass at SXSW 2013

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At this year’s SXSW Interactive conference, Google’s Timothy Jordan delivered a demonstration on a first look at Google Glass and its supporting Mirror API. In addition, Google showed attendees how it is working with early partners to write dedicated apps for the new device. Path, Evernote and The New York Times have all created a range of “mini-apps” to work with Google Glass.

The New York Times app, for example, shows top story headlines and then lets you listen to the full article by telling Glass to “read aloud”. Google’s own Gmail app has also been ported over to Glass and uses voice recognition to answer emails, as well as a visual indicator of who is sending you email. Along with Gmail, Google+ is also built directly into the Glass experience as a platform for sharing. However, Google’s Jordan stated that developers would be able to add their own sharing options. Glass also features Google’s text to speech technology, a camera for taking pictures and recording video and also voice recognition software built directly into the hardware.

Glass works by connecting to Google’s Cloud servers with a dedicated app, which pulls and pushes data to Glass through Google’s new APIs. All of this data is then presented on Glass through what Google calls “Timeline Cards.” Timeline cards can include text, images, video and rich HTML. Besides single cards, Google has also developed a new concept which it has named ‘bundles’. Bundles are a set of cards that users can navigate using the mini touchpad on the side of glass, or using their own voice to navigate the menus.

As Glass is a new form factor, Google is pushing a new set of rules to make the user experience enjoyable and uncluttered. For example, for a news app, users would not expect to see full news stories; rather the key headline would be pushed in front of a relevant picture from the story. Google’s doesn’t want to make Glass distracting for the user.

There is no confirmed availability of Google Glass, but you can see a full action demo below:

 

How To Clean Unwanted Apps in Social Media

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Avi Charkham has created a wonderful site called http://mypermissions.org/ which helps users to manage the ever growing list of apps, that we are associate our social accounts too.  It is good to practice to prune services and apps that you no longer use for good security best practice. To make life easier, I’ve posted the direct links below:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications

Twitter: http://twitter.com/settings/connections

Google: https://www.google.com/accounts/IssuedAuthSubTokens

Yahoo: https://api.login.yahoo.com/WSLogin/V1/unlink?.intl=us&.scrumb=oGuZry/Yg97

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/secure/settings?userAgree=&goback=.aas

Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/account#applications

Instagram: https://instagr.am/oauth/manage_access

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/services/auth/list.gne?from=extend

Google Launch Realtime Search

I’m surprised its taken Google so long to launch Realtime (social) search. Last year, their Updates feature was very cool, especially at monitoring hashtags. I don’t feel this new feature will replace proper sentiment monitoring tools such as Radian6 or Scoutlabs. But it’s certainly not a bad free tool. Now, I wonder what monitoring realtime goodness Microsoft will add to Bing?

Remember, be careful what you tweet. They are being archived for a very long time to come.

Google Steps Up With a New Wave

 

Google are set soon to release “Wave” and I predict it will be a major game changer. Imagine email, instant messaging, wikis, forums, blogs, mobile, SMS all being replaced with Google Wave.  Check out at least the first 40 minutes of video for an introduction to the developer preview. I can’t wait to try it out.

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Keeping Friday Night Clean with Gmail Goggles

 Gmail Soap

I’m not sure whether to continue laughing, or to be truly grateful to Google for a new innovative Gmail Labs app which has just been launched entitled, Mail Goggles.

Google Engineer, Jon Perlow posts on the Gmail blog

“Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn’t. Like that late night memo — I mean mission statement — to the entire firm.

I guess we have all sent emails over the years when we shouldn’t have. Some fuelled by alcohol, some fuelled by anger. I do think that for many people, this app will be truly useful. Though I’m still undecided if I like my email client controlling yet another part of the way I use my mail. I already have rules, spam and content filtering.  Can I no longer be trusted to send emails after a few beers, late at night?  Probably not.

Mail Goggles can be enabled in the Settings section of your Gmail.

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