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This week at CTIA 2013, Verizon announced a partnership with Latino-centric mobile carrier brand Viva Movil – and they did it with the company’s top shareholder Jennifer Lopez. Speaking about how the Latino population is up at 50 million strong – and growing – Verizon’s own chief operating officer Marni Walden made it clear: this company wants to expand through an exclusive partnership with Viva Movil.
This partnership will be working with one of Verizon’s largest premium retailers Moorehead Communications as well as Brightstar. Walden introduced Jennifer Lopez who represents Viva Movil as a celebrity and a leader in the Latino community – she says – and speaks about statistics and bits and pieces that make it appear that Verizon with Viva Movil will be in the best position possible to address the Spanish-speaking market segment in the near future.
Lopez spoke about an exclusive line of accessories that she’s created herself. At the moment it would appear that this includes iPhone 5 cases – but it’s likely that other devices will be included as well.
“There’s no specific place for Latinos to really, really be catered to, which is why we did this. But anyone can come in and enjoy this.” – Jennifer Lopez, Chief Creative Officer for Viva Movil
The company “Viva Movil, by Jennifer Lopez”, as she called it, will be opening up today online. The first store will be open on June 15 and it’ll be open in New York City. More physical stores will be opening across the USA – 15 in all, for starters, – in places like L.A. and Miami.
This week Microsoft started their first major next-generation Xbox game console event off with a bang, showing the console and naming it all at once: the Xbox One. Before the event began, it was (once again) revealed that today’s reveal took more than just a weekend to create – Don Mattrick, , noted that “we’ve
As Google’s first wearable computer Glass edges in past its initial run of devices, members of the general public begin to ask: when will the device be delivered in a form that any non-developers will be able to get their hands on? At a Google I/O 2013 “Fireside Chat” with several members of the main Google Glass team, this question was addressed more than once. In short: soon, but not nearly as soon as they’d like.
It’s not a matter of being able to create the device and distribute it fast enough: Google has been clear that they’re perfectly able to create devices en masse and send them to customers at speed. The company now creates and distributes several hardware bits and pieces: the Chromebook Pixel, Nexus 4 smartphone, and Nexus 7 tablet to name a few. Instead, it would seem, the team of creators here only wish it were the future, past the steps they must take between here while the device is still in its developer infancy and the point at which Glass is ready for anyone to buy.
Product Director for Google Glass Steve Lee spoke to this point at length, noting the place where the project was today and where it’ll be going in the very near future.
Steve Lee: With the Explorer Program, where we’re at right now, is were now getting it in to the hands of thousands of other people to see what exciting things they can do with Glass. The first group of people that we’re getting it in the hands of are developers. We know that to fully realize the potential of Glass, we need your help. We need innovators to develop on the platform.
About a month ago, we started distributing Glass to our Explorers. I’m happy to say that earlier this week, right before Google I/O, we’d invited all 2,000 people that signed up at last year’s I/O to come pick up their Glass device. We’re very happy about that.
The next group of people that will become Explorers are those that signed up for #ifihadglass. And there were 8,000 people selected from over 100,000 people who applied. And we will soon be rolling out invites to those folks to pick up Glass.
What’s exciting about that group of people – they’re not developers – but it’s a nice cross-section of people. We have folks who are educators, teachers, we have athletes. We have DJs, dentists, hair stylists. All kinds of different people.
And so we’re really excited to see a diverse set of folks – what are they going to do with glass?
Also commenting on the situation with where Glass is today and how long it will be before the product is delivered in a final consumer form was Senior Developer Advocate at Google for Project Glass Timothy Jordan. Also acting as moderator for this fireside chat, Jordan made sure to let the audience know that it’s not that Google wants to hold the device back for no good reason.
Timothy Jordan: We don’t have an updated timeline for Glass release. Where we’re at right now, is… lemme say this: I’ve had a number of people come up to me at Google I/O and be like: ‘I want Google Glass, and I have this amazing idea.’ And my first reaction is: ‘I want you to have Glass!’
And that’s our goal. It’s only a matter of time.
Right now we’re selling Glass to the Explorers who signed up at Google I/O last year. Next it’s the “If I had Glass” people. Next, it could be you.
SlashGear will be continuing to explore the Google Glass environment with our own up-close look at the Developer Edition of the device at updates, during pointed moments of opportunity, and at moments when brilliance strikes from here until that day when Google decides to move forward with a general edition. Until then: courage.
At the moment it’s unclear what sort of price structure will be in place or how the device will be distributed to the public once the time is ripe. It’s likely they’ll be picked up in bags like the one you see here held by Glass lead industrial designer Isabelle Olsson – this bag contained an original prototype, just so you know.
Google Glass is at such a point in its infancy that the company could be making major changes to every piece of the project – software and hardware included. Software updates will be pushed out to developers from this point forward on a monthly bases with changes coming based on suggestions from the public. Suggestions made by developers and the public are also being taken under advisement by the team for hardware as well as software.
This goes so far as Jordan literally writing down a Pantone color code suggested by a developer for the next wave of Glass hardware during this extended chat. This team appears serious about making a device that’s both by and for its future wearers.
It was in chats like these – and in breakout sessions more like lessons for developer attendees of the conference – that the Glass team used to represent itself in California during I/O 2013. Glass may not have been discussed at length in the opening keynote on day 1, but it certainly had its fair share of attention during the week. Expect this chatter to get extra vibrant once the consumer edition arrives.
Because Google’s most popular operating system – and the most popular operating system on the planet, mind you – is Android, it only makes sense that much of the company’s yearly developers conference would be centered in this multi-device environment. What we expected for this year’s Google I/O was an upgrade to a new version of the mobile OS and a new device (or two) to run it on. Instead what we got was a major upgrade to Google’s social networking connections and services working in and around Android – a turning point, perhaps, for the company in a single three-day series of events.
We began our journey in a bit of a behind-the-scenes tour of the Moscone Center in San Francisco to see what Google had in store. It appeared that the setup was rather similar to what we’d seen the year before – save the massive models hovering above the third floor.
While on the third floor we literally saw the word ANDROID dominating the floor aside Chrome, the second floor retained a set of services for multiple platforms. The second floor also had Google Glass holding its own unique space on the level’s far side. Below you’ll see an on-site preview of the first of three floors through Glass – aka #throughglass – this method of collection acting as a teaser for what would become the dominant subject of the conference – whether Google intended it to or not.
It was announced by Google that they’d at this point counted 900 million Android activations across the planet. This number jumped from just 400 million activations in 2012 and 100 million activations in 2011 – that’s four times the number from one year to the next, then nearly double that number again between last year and here.
Just this past month, Android activations were marked at 1.35 million per day on average back on the 13th of March according to Google – at 750 million activations back then and 900 million now, the company could be seeing over 1.5 billion Android activations by the end of the year.
Devices
Google showed of a single new device – a new “Google Edition” or “Nexus Edition” of the Samsung GALAXY S 4. This device would be sold straight from Google the way a Nexus smartphone or tablet would, but would retain the Samsung GALAXY S 4 brand name. While device announcements such as this are normally joined by a giveaway for attendees of the conference, here it was joined by a price tag and availability date: June 25th for a healthy $649 unlocked and without contractual obligations.
We had our own up-close look at this GALAXY S 4 courtesy of Hugo Barra. Google’s Vice President of Android Product Management showed this device as exactly what you’d expect it would be – at least as swift as the Samsung-skinned original and ready to act as a non-Nexus alternative for those wishing to pick up Jelly Bean straight from the source.
NVIDIA came in to take a bit of the hype and excitement of the week with a double-down announcement of their SHIELD device becoming available for pre-sale. NVIDIA’s SHIELD was both announced for pre-sale for early adopters and had its normal retailer pre-sale bumped up due to an apparent rush of requests from normal consumers.
Google Glass was, of course, on a much larger percentage of the center’s population than anywhere else in the world at any time up until this point, with the one possible exception being inside Google and Google X itself. Google Glass runs on its own unique version of Android, the device itself able to be hacked at this point to run Ubuntu (this also proven at a I/O breakout session just this week). Though it wasn’t mentioned but in passing during I/O’s keynote session, Glass and development surrounding it ended up being the star of the week.
Sliding in on the wearable wave as well was a device announced this week by Recon – the Recon Je. This pair of glasses works with a miniature computer that runs Android as well. We had a quick peek at this device here in its near-complete state as well – it’ll be released by the end of the year, well ahead of Google’s own Glass consumer push.
Services
The system known as Google Play game services was launched to tie together gamers on not only Android, but iOS and in-browser as well for desktop machines. This system will allow game saves to the cloud so that users can sign in with their game profile from any device and pick up their game where they left off. It will also support easier connections for multi-player games between users playing on different platforms.
Groups such as Glu Mobile and Gameloft have already begun integrating Google Play game services connectivity and functionality into their games. Developers at Vector Unit announced and demonstrated the ability to connect over the web with speed with their upcoming title Riptide GP 2 – a game also demonstrated this week on NVIDIA SHIELD out on the main floor at Google I/O.
Development
As this is a developers convention, Google chose it for the announcement point of the system that the company says could end Android fragmentation woes forever. This system is called Android Studio and will act as Google’s first all-inclusive developer tool they’ve ever offered – an IDE (integrated developer environment) that offers features such as virtual multi-device display testing and real-time views of multiple language translations in-app.
Android Studio works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux at the moment. In speaking with multiple developers throughout the week, we found the fact that these three platforms were chosen first to be a common notion. Why give developers a Chromebook Pixel with an operating system based on the web and announce an Android developer system that’s not entirely web-based?
On that note, Google also let it be known that the Chrome OS experience was coming to its Android web browser with several account-sync abilities. One of the more interesting of these was form autocomplete, this allowing users to store their credit card information and contact information as they normally would on the desktop version of the browser and pull it up automatically from the mobile web.
Apps
Announced as an upgrade to the buy-and-own system already in place, Google Play Music All Access was revealed as a real competitor to streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio. This system is able to stream music both in a web browser and in-app, costing the user $9.99 a month for access – if they don’t get in on the deal early, that is.
This system is based on a choose-your-own-playlist system that also offers up smart selections from Google’s robots – at the moment, it’s both in-web and on Android, but not ready for iOS. This system is ready to roll for both mobile and in-browser users of Google Music.
Perhaps the most important app announced this week was the cross-platform chat platform expanding what was originally reserved for Google+ in video chat. Here we saw Google+ Hangouts for Android, iOS, in-browser inside Google+, and as a OS X app. Users sign in with their Google+ account and use contacts through Circles to connect.
Google+ Hangouts are able to work with text, stickers and icons, video and photo sharing, and video chat. This system will be expanding to include new types of sharing in the future as Google+ as a social network leads the way. This system is now live in effect for all platforms announced, desktop, Android, and iOS included.
Wrap-up
Android has been presented this week as one of several central systems part of the greater ecosystem that is Google, a company that aims to get technology “out of your way”. Google’s CEO Larry Page stepped on stage at the start of this conference to express his wish for an ideal future: “technology should do the hard work, so you can get on and live your life.”
In the end, Android became a power here that was assumed while Google’s ecosystem grew around it. It’s here that Google makes it clear: Android itself doesn’t need to be updated every time the company has a big event. It’s the year of the Context Ecosystem, and Google’s presentation of Android at Google I/O 2013 has once again proven it.
It’s a return to form here at Google I/O 2013, with none other than Google’s own Vice President of Android Product Management Hugo Barra letting us know that he’d personally fought hard for a more developer-focused single keynote address. As past years had been notably more consumer and product-focused than 2013, it’s not a flash-bang the company has gone for here, it’s a return to form: Google I/O in its purest form.
Google’s developer conference is home to more than just developers, of course: press, analysts, students, and Google lovers from all angles are invited, but this year the company had a more focused approach in mind. While the conference retained its three-day allotment of breakout sessions and fireside chats with Google’s own for developers of all types, the company’s initial keynote was limited to one day instead of two.
This single keynote was also toned down – significantly – especially compared to last year’s explosion of content: new devices, a new version of Android, and a skydive drop live with what was then called Project Glass. Larry Page stepped on stage to make an address to the developers and the public, taking part in an extended question-and-answer session as well, showing some extreme boldness answering whatever random queries attendees might have.
Because of these elements in the keynote – the most public and direct bit of the convention from Google, to be sure, the entire set of events was given what we suggested to Hugo Barra had given it all a more “human” vibe to I/O. This, he said was “exactly what we were aiming for.”
Google’s top guns stepped into the fray as well, with Googlers like Barra and Sergey Brin appearing for drinks and a chat with the press late on Day 1. There it was abundantly clear that this event was not simply made for developer training, but for person-to-person connectivity: another pillar the event was originally built on.
“All of Google’s services are gradually interweaving. Google I/O 2013 is an ecosystem play, and it’s one of the biggest – and arguably ambitious – we’ve ever seen. It’ll drag Google+ with it along the way, and it might even kickstart the “internet of things” when we start to see some legitimate advantages of having every device a web-connected node.
Google didn’t give us a new phone for our pocket or a new tablet for our coffee table; instead, it gave us so much more.” – Chris Davies
What did you think of Google I/O 2013 from a consumer perspective? If you don’t consider yourself a consumer in this case – how did you take it all from whatever position you’re in?
Shortly after we heard rumors about a possible Tumblr buyout from Yahoo this morning, the company has announced that they will be holding a press event on Monday where they are said to be announcing “something special” It doesn’t look to be anything minor either, as company CEO Marissa Mayer is expected to make an appearance and speak.
According to a tweet by CNBC, the event will be held in New York City and will be “product-related”, which hints to the possibility that the company simply isn’t planning a shindig at their headquarters, but rather are setting up a venue to announce something fairly big. The company also plans to live stream the event to those not able to be in attendance.
Details are still scarce at this point, and we’re not 100% sure as to what the company has up its sleeve, but we wouldn’t be too surprised if it involved Tumblr in some capacity. It’s rumored that Yahoo wants to acquire Tumblr for around $1 billion in order to cater towards the younger, hip crowd. It would certainly be Yahoo’s biggest buy yet, and the company has been all about acquiring younger startups as of late.
Just recently, the company acquired several smaller firms, including popular to-do list Astrid, but have ended up shutting most of them down and acquiring the employees, suggesting that Yahoo wants to expand and improve on its various services and offerings. Whatever the case may be come Monday, let’s hope that Yahoo has something worthwhile planned to unveil.
Call us crazy, but it sure feels like Yahoo’s had one heck of a spring. When it comes to spending, anyway. Just as soon as it can get one check to clear, the search icon is breaking the ink back out to write another. According to a breaking tweet from CNBC, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is scheduled to speak at a “product-related” event in New York City this coming Monday. It’s tough to tell what kind of surprise will be in store, but we wouldn’t be shocked if it involved the word “Tumblr.” We’re digging for more as we speak, and will most certainly be on hand to see what comes to fruition.
Update: We’ve just heard back from Yahoo, and the event is indeed going down in order to “share something special.” And yes, we’ll be there to bring whatever happens to your browser of choice.
This week at a fireside chat during Google I/O 2013, Mary Lou Jepsen – currently the head of the Display Division at Google X – let it be known that “there’s no more silicon in Silicon Valley – it’s all iPhone apps.” She quickly added – “or Android apps, I should say.” An overarching theme from her set of words in the extended chat made it clear: she’s not satisfied with the current atmosphere for hardware innovation, particularly when it comes to startup funding.
Jepsen was joined by serial entrepreneurs Julia Hartz, co-founder and president of Eventbrite, Slava Rubin, CEO and co-founder of Indegogo, and Caterina Fake, founder and CEO of Findery and co-founder of Flickr. It was on this panel that Jepsen made the case for not just a broken device hardware startup model, but for new entrants into this startup world to be aiming for the moon. It was from within Google X, after all, that Google Glass originated.
“Assuming that you start big and swing for the fences – don’t do something small, first off. But assuming you do, and you get to that point where you’re taking on one of the largest companies in the world – even though you didn’t mean to – I’ve never started to mean to – be prepared to give away most of your stocks so you can win that gain, because otherwise you’re crushed.
Plan that early on, for what you’re going to do – at One Laptop Per Child, there’s this 60-minute expose on some of the larger forces that we came up against – and there’s a lot of stories I’ve not yet told about Pixel Qi. When you get in that seat, you have to be able to figure out a way where it’s more attractive for companies not to crush you.
And that’s very difficult.” – Mary Lou Jepsen
She added assurance that joining a big company is not for everyone – startups are great, she said, especially if you don’t want to get involved in the politics of working with a big company. You’ll be in a lifeboat, she explained, but though you’ll be dealing with holes in your boat here and there, you’ll be working with people that want to help you and are ready and willing to go that extra mile for you.
Meanwhile she warned that hardware funding, again, isn’t in a place where it should be. Groups that push cash to software startups are far easier to find at this time in history than those looking to build up a group for a hardware device.
“VCs (Venture Capital companies) don’t have the core competence anymore. Silicon Valley, pretty much, too – and I’m sure there’s exceptions, but by-and-large, to fund or even to due diligence on hardware.
But there are places that do fund hardware, and you can find them depending upon your bend – you have to be creative. There are Angels, certainly, and Super Angels to fund it.
But there’s not this sort of – path – but there’s not much competition, so you have an advantage.” – Mary Lou Jepsen
Have a peek at the video below for additional insight from Jepsen and let us know how well you’re taking the news – or the advice, as it were. Are you encouraged by the idea that Jepsen, one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and a ranking member of the top 50 female computer scientists of all time is suggesting that jumping in on a startup is a situation you should want to be a part of? Let us know!
This week at Google I/O 2013, the company’s yearly developer conference, the wearable technology device Glass was discussed as a scalable fashion platform by the project’s lead industrial designer. In a fireside chat with several other creators and head minds from Google on the Glass project, Isabelle Olsson let it be known that Glass has come a long way since its first day in the lab – she had one of the original prototypes on hand to show off in-hand.
Olsson showed a rather bulky and – according to her – rather heavy piece of hardware that was a mix of geeky massive and hipster odd. Speaking about the experience, walking into the room at Google on the first day that prototypes had been mocked up, Olsson described it as a rather exciting – if not scary – experience. One of the first changes the team had to make, she said, was in the unit’s ability to adjust.
“When I joined the project, we thought we needed 50 different adjustment mechanisms, but that wouldn’t make a good user experience. So we scaled it down to this one adjustment mechanism.” – Isabelle Olsson, Google Glass Lead Industrial Designer
Olsson also showed off Glass’ ability to be taken apart and moved. There’s one piece that acts as the most basic frame and the other – the computer – that can be attached to many different bits and pieces being built today.
“We make Glass modular. In this stage, this means you’re able to remove the board from the main frame. This is pretty cool. This opens up a lot of possibilities. It opens up possibilities for not only functionality but also scalability.” – Isabelle Olsson, Google Glass Lead Industrial Designer
Glass is still at a place where this team cannot tell the public when they will be ready to sell to consumers – the same goes for the future of Glass. Noting that they wouldn’t be able to comment on the future of Glass very much at this point. This was called into question by a boisterous audience member who yelled:
Why not?!
To which the host of this chat, Senior Developer Advocate at Google for Project Glass, Timothy Jordan, replied: “because it’s Google’s policy not to comment on future unannounced products. And because I follow rules.” To which the same audience member replied, pathetically hilariously:
Ok.
This attitude reflected the thoughts and wishes of the entire audience – or at least those without the device on their temples. With more than 30 members of the audience wearing the developer “Explorer Edition” in full effect, we were in rare company without a doubt.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
