Hasta La Gadget!

Sure, Google already has Chromecast for throwing websites and media to big screens. The company’s engineers believe they can go one better, however, with something called the Open Project framework. It’s an effort to find a standardized way of mirroring not only content, but also touch inputs on a suitably equipped touchscreen or connected TV. Setting it up is simple: open the Open Project server webpage running on the machine connected to your chosen display, scan a QR code with your smartphone camera, and boom, you’re ready to interact with your content and apps. It opens a world where people can collaborate on content or play multiplayer games without additional hardware or sensors. Open Project remains a proof-of-concept for now, or perhaps a plaything for UI-obsessed billionaires, but check out the video to see where the technology might take us in the future.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Google

Comments

Via: Android Community

Source: Google Research Blog, Open Project Whitepaper (PDF)

Despite its recent acquisition, BlackBerry announced it will be releasing a desktop BBM app at BlackBerry Jam Asia 2013 this week. Unfortunately, the long-overdue app leaves much to be desired. BBM will come to desktops, starting with Windows-based PCs. Since the bulk of BlackBerry’s core customers were enterprise clients, these customers spent a lot of time behind their desks. This release should have come way earlier. But even more striking, the desktop implementation of the messaging service is awful.

After installing the app, users will have to link their phones with their computers, probably through Wi-Fi. If you’re in a coffee shop and want to send a quick message from your laptop, you’ll first have to find a way to connect your phone to your computer. It’s the PlayBook nonsense all over again.

Messaging someone should be ubiquitous and effortless. You shouldn’t have to wonder whether your phone is still turned on to send a message from your computer. Some applications allow you to send text messages from your computer. But the point of BBM is that it’s not SMS — it’s supposed to be better. Moreover, BBM messages go through BlackBerry’s servers, just like Facebook messages, iMessages, WhatsApp messages, etc. And these other services don’t reroute all your messages through your phone.

That’s why limiting BBM to one device at a time is a serious flaw that should have been fixed. Many people have a phone, a tablet and a computer and want to use the same services on those three devices. In its current implementation, that’s not possible without a dirty hack for BBM. Due to multitasking limitations, iOS users will even sometimes need to relaunch the app to deliver the desktop messages — that is, if BlackBerry can fix their servers and actually launch BBM for iOS and Android.

There is no release date yet, and the company only showed the Windows version at the conference. WhatsApp doesn’t have a desktop client, so you might say that BBM’s release is better than nothing. But BBM for desktop 2.0 will have to be more than a simple interface that redirects your messages to your phone. For now, it’s just an empty shell.

Update: It turns out that what was demoed on stage is a way to extend BlackBerry 10 to the desktop. Here’s a statement from Chris Smith, Vice President, Handheld Application Platform and Tools at BlackBerry:

“This was a demonstration that showed how applications could be projected from a BlackBerry 10 device onto a computer running Windows or Mac OS. In the demo, the power of BlackBerry 10 is used to sense the connection, over Wifi or USB, then adapt the user interface and mirror the content onto the desktop monitor.

The concept demo was used to demonstrate just one of the possibilities of mobile computing – and to showcase the capabilities built into the BlackBerry 10 platform that our developer community could leverage in their own apps.”

This week the teams behind several of Google’s key apps for Android have ushered in updates that tie the family together closer, ushering in an environment ripe for a new operating system iteration. That new version is, of course, Android 4.4 KitKat, and considering Google has been ushering in the press on the subject so […]

Good news Android gamers, if you were looking forward to playing EA’s Plants vs Zombies 2, you will be able to get your hands on the game come October, although specific release dates were not mentioned. The game was originally planned for a summer release, but as you might recall from our earlier report, EA alleged that Apple had paid them a lot of money to delay the game as much as possible for the Android platform which is a pretty serious allegation.

The game has been available for iOS gamers for a while now, and Chinese Android consumers when it was released earlier this month, but for Android gamers around the world, we guess you will be able to get your hands on the game in October. The game will feature a bunch of new characters, such as zombies from other worlds along with new plants, plant food, and power ups. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for a specific release date, but are you guys looking forward to the game finally making its way onto Android devices after so long?

Plants Vs Zombies 2 Could Arrive On Android In October original content from Ubergizmo.

We’re sure there are many iOS users out there who were pretty pleased when Apple announced that the iWork apps would be free for download with new iOS device purchases, presumably to make iOS devices better for productivity which is one of the arguments Microsoft is using to make their Surface tablets more appealing. In any case it seems that there are several iOS users who have complained that the apps are giving them the “blue screen of death”, basically crashing their devices and in some cases even forcing the handset to reboot which we can only imagine to be very annoying.

The effect is seemingly easy to trigger, and all a user would have to do is launch one of the iWork apps, open an existing document, and press the Home button and cause the crash. It does not appear that this is a widespread issue so your mileage might vary. It is unknown if Apple is aware of this issue and if they are working on an update that would fix it, but if you’re curious as to whether your device would suffer from a similar crash, try out the method above and let us know in the comments below! In the meantime you can check out the crash in action in the video above.

iWork Causing Blue Screen Of Death For Some iOS Users original content from Ubergizmo.