Jan 10
During CES 2014, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was on hand to deliver a keynote. During the keynote, she mentioned that Yahoo had just purchased a company called Aviate. That company … Continue reading
Jan 10
Google has given Google Play Services for Android a big update–adding turn-based multiplayer suppor
Posted in: Today's ChiliGoogle has given Google Play Services for Android a big update—adding turn-based multiplayer support, a preliminary Google Drive API, and improved battery life for all users who run Location Reporting.
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Jan 09
Lenovo Not Convinced Of Intel’s Plans For Dual Booting Windows And Android Devices
Posted in: Today's Chili
CES is a time where companies show off their latest products and technological innovations, an this year ASUS had an interesting device called the Transformer Book Duet which was a tablet that not only could run Windows, but could dual boot to Android if the user chose to. It certainly seems to address the problem that some customers have when deciding if they should get a Windows tablet or an Android one, unless money isn’t an issue and you can just get both. Rarely is that the case as this is one of the technological innovations that Intel is quite proud of, where during their Intel CES keynote speech, the company’s CEO revealed their plans to promote additional products that could dual boot both Windows and Android at the same time.
Is this our one-size-fits-all solution? For some yes it would, but for others, namely Lenovo, they don’t seem overly enthused about Intel’s plans. Speaking to VentureBeat, Lenovo’s North American president Jay Parker revealed that he wasn’t overly convinced about Intel’s plans. According to Parker, “I don’t see it [Intel’s Android on Windows plan] as being a mass-market opportunity in the near- or maybe even long-term […] I believe the market can support multiple operating systems and ecosystems.” As it stands Lenovo has a whole host of products running Microsoft’s Windows platform, but at the same time are promoting their Android products as well, meaning that by combining platforms and thus selling less products, it would seem as though there really isn’t much to be gained.
What do you guys think of Intel’s plans for dual booting devices in the future? Are you enamoured by the idea of a single product that can run multiple platforms, or would you rather have a dedicated product for a single platform instead?
Lenovo Not Convinced Of Intel’s Plans For Dual Booting Windows And Android Devices original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Jan 09
Google Play Services Gets Improved Mobile Ads And Multiplayer Support, Google+ Sharing And Preview Of Drive API
Posted in: Today's Chili
Google today started rolling out the latest version of its Google Play services for Android. Just like earlier updates, version 4.1 brings a number of incremental changes to the company’s service for integrating Google services into mobile apps. The rollout is currently in process and should land on all Android devices worldwide within the next few days.
Today’s update brings support for turn-based multiplayer games to Play services, for example. With this, developers can easily build asynchronous games with up to eight participants. Every time a player takes a turn, the data is uploaded to Google’s servers and shared with the other players. Google has integrated this service with its tools for matching players with others, too.
Also new in this update is improved support for Google+ sharing. This, the company says, will make it “even easier for users to share with the right people from your app.” As part of this update, users will be able to get auto-complete support and suggested recipients for all Gmail contacts, device contacts and people on Google+.
Developers can now also use Play services to access Google Drive through a new API that’s now in preview. With this, they can read and write files in Drive. Users will be able to work on these files offline, and changes will be synced automatically.
For developers who use Google’s ad products, this new version introduces full support for DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Search Ads for Mobile Apps. What’s most interesting for advertisers, though, is that publishers can now also use a new location API to give Google access to a user’s location when requesting ads. Location-based ads are likely to perform better than generic ads, after all, though users have generally been a bit nervous about sharing this data with advertisers given the potential privacy ramifications.
One other feature most users will likely appreciate is improved battery life. While Google isn’t sharing any details about this, the company said that anybody who has Google Location Reporting turned on should see longer battery life after this update, though whether that means less than 1 percent more (likely) or 10 percent more (very unlikely) remains to be seen.
Jan 09
Android-based consoles are not such a bad idea. With Android being open sourced and with plenty of apps available, it would seem as though manufacturers would have not only the platform that they can tweak to their liking, but also a plethora of games that gamers can choose from. Kickstarter-backed OUYA is probably one of the more successful Android consoles to date, but oddly enough things have quietened down and we’re not sure if this means the trend is over, at least for now. Well whatever the case, Huawei is hoping to shake things up again by launching their own Android console called the Tron, and will offer it for $120 which is about half the price of Mad Catz’s M.O.J.O Android console that was announced at CES 2014.
So what sort of specs are we looking at? Well Huawei’s efforts will come with an NVIDIA Tegra 4 chipset under the hood, which already outdoes the OUYA which is powered by a Tegra 3 chipset. It will also pack 2GB of RAM, 16 or 32GB of onboard storage, a USB 3.0 port, WiFi, Bluetooth, and will run on Android 4.2.3 Jelly Bean. The console itself is tiny and if you have ever seen one of those portable speakers before, it’s roughly around that size, just in case the size of the controller in the photo above did not provide you with the perspective. No word on when Huawei plans to release the Tron console, but apparently it’s primary market would be China, so for those of us living stateside, we might never get a chance to see it again post-CES 2014.
Huawei Debuts Tron Android-Powered Gaming Console original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Jan 09
Galaxy devices customized by artists in Samsung x KidRobot team-up at CES 2014
Posted in: Today's ChiliSamsung has decided to to tap into the collectable artist toys market with KidRobot this week at CES 2014, inviting several artists to create unique one-off Samsung Galaxy Gear, S4, … Continue reading
Jan 09
Epson is known for printing, and at CES they gave us a look at their LabelWorks LW-600P label maker. The latest in a line of Android-capable label makers, the LW-600P … Continue reading
Jan 09
Popular Android predictive keyboard SwiftKey is about to pop up in a whole different series of devices, with the text entry system set to appear in the Clarion AX1 Android-based car entertainment system. It’ll allow passengers and distracted drivers to access the web and send messages in usual SwiftKey style.
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Jan 09
If you’re holding out for the next Android superphone, you may only have a few months to wait. Samsung has spoken out about its upcoming devices in a long interview with Bloomberg, and it plans to have the S5 out by April.
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Jan 08
With Android landing on all-in-one computers and Windows extending its reach deeper into the mobile world, the platform world is tightening into three key teams: iOS and OS X, Windows, and Android.
Chrome OS, BlackBerry, and the other minor players have derivative unit volume, and can therefore be discounted in our larger image of the market.
To compare those three groups yields an irksome, yet interesting, picture. Gartner recently released a set of statistics and prognostications along those operating system niches, stacking the groups against one another. The fine folks over at Redmond Magazine did us the favor of graphing the results.
Here, in a single chart, is the rise of Android, the slippage in the PC market, and Apple’s rising tide:
Microsoft manages to stay atop Apple, but the chart makes it plain that if Microsoft doesn’t want to fall even further behind Android — recall that Android is now being deployed across device classes — it will have to grow its mobile base at a far more rapid pace than it has thus far. Put another way, for Microsoft to chase Google, it can’t lean on the PC market, even as that market category stabilizes.
We can presume that Apple’s growth is mostly iOS-based, given that its OS X offerings are dealing with similar headwinds as Microsoft’s Windows platform.
In July 2013, my colleague Josh Constine and I called Android the new Windows. Recently, Paul Thurrott made the point that 2013 was “the year that Android became the Windows of the mobile world.” In an increasingly multi-modal computing market, where the difference between device classes is blurring, operating systems are becoming more diversely deployed. So, we can’t keep Android unit volume in one bucket, and Windows PC numbers in a separate class.
Microsoft, if it wants to regain the mantle of the leading platform company, has to do more than end the decline in the PC market: It has to ignite its own mobile growth.
Top Image Credit: Flickr
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