You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
Sold out for weeks after its launch, everyone seems to be in love with the Chromecast — the ultra-cheap, ultra-small, interface-free, HDMI-toting TV appendage that stole the show from the new Nexus 7. Building beyond the DIAL device-discovery protocol that Netflix and YouTube have supported, Chromecast is a client of Google Cast, which enables the kind of second-screen control for volume and other features implemented by the device.
Google has gotten the jump on similar products such as the Plair TV dongle by natively supporting three of the most popular services to use on televisions — Netflix, YouTube and Pandora. Furthermore, it has also enabled a backdoor to many other services by building in support for displaying Chrome tabs on a Chromecast-connected TV. In doing so, it treats the TV as an extension of the browser just as Apple’s forthcoming OS X Mavericks can treat an Apple TV-connected set as another Macintosh screen.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Google
The Moto X is a device that will melt away into pure information. It’s capable of doing things without having to be asked. Or at least, that’s the promise. But the reality doesn’t quite get there.
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People are greedy. We just are. What we want is all the content. All the content streaming to our Chromecasts. And as the dog days of summer have slowly ticked by Vimeo
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This week there’s been suggestion that the next Google Nexus device would be made in collaboration with Motorola – a team-up that’s been expected since the two companies became one last year. In the completion of the Motorola Mobility acquisition by Google, the latter company was pressed on whether they’d give the former special treatment […]
In an attempt to live up to its age-old motto to not be evil, Google has just added 79 more patents to its Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. Enacted in March of this year, the pact was designed to encourage open-source software development, and consists of patents the Mountain View company won’t use to sue anyone unless first attacked. While the first set of patents had to deal with large data sets, these additional ones were acquired from IBM and CA Technologies and consist of software used to run data centers, such as middleware and distributed database management. The technologies included in the OPN Pledge has so far been of the back-end variety, but the search giant claims that it’ll add more consumer-facing patents to the pledge in the future. Google might not ever be completely free from the dark side, but gestures like these could go a long way in earning good will — especially in an age of heavy back-to-back lawsuits. For those who want to delve head-first into the legalese, hit up the patent link below.
Filed under: Google
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Google Open Source, Google Patents
Wanna mod that shiny new Nexus 7? Today’s your lucky day. Google just posted the factory image and binaries for its second generation 7-inch tablet — also known by the product name “razor” and device name “flo”. The factory image lets you restore your new Nexus 7 to the exact software it shipped with in case you grow tired of that custom ROM you cooked up using the binaries (natch). Speaking of which, the packages include drivers for audio and sensors from ASUS, NFC from Broadcom plus graphics and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink from Qualcomm. This comes mere hours after some open source drama surrounding the binaries (which now appears to be resolved) and with plenty of time to spare for UK customers. Follow the source links below and have fun hacking this weekend.
Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, ASUS, Google
Source: Google Developers (factory image), Google Developers (binaries)
The comical nature of paying a game that no one else can see aside, developer Sean McCracken is working on an alien shooter game for Google Glass, calling it on his Google+ a mix between 3D Space Invaders and Missile Command. Earlier this week, McCracken showed the game off in a short, somewhat hard to […]
If there was ever a time for Google and its Nexus 7 hardware partner Asus to step up and deliver something new and improved, it’s now.
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You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
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.
