Hasta La Gadget!

Don’t tell Google, but its latest X lab project is something performed by the great internet public every day. For free. Mountain View’s secret lab stitched together 1,000 computers totaling 16,000 cores to form a neural network with over 1 billion connections, and sent it to YouTube looking for cats. Unlike the popular human time-sink, this was all in the name of science: specifically, simulating the human brain. The neural machine was presented with 10 million images taken from random videos, and went about teaching itself what our feline friends look like. Unlike similar experiments, where some manual guidance and supervision is involved, Google’s pseudo-brain was given no such assistance.

It wasn’t just about cats, of course — the broader aim was to see whether computers can learn face detection without labeled images. After studying the large set of image-data, the cluster revealed that indeed it could, in addition to being able to develop concepts for human body parts and — of course — cats. Overall, there was 15.8 percent accuracy in recognizing 20,000 object categories, which the researchers claim is a 70 percent jump over previous studies. Full details of the hows and whys will be presented at a forthcoming conference in Edinburgh.

Google simulates the human brain with 1000 machines, 16000 cores and a love of cats originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ready to waste the morning away? Google has partnered with Lego Australia to allow users to build objects using the popular plastic blocks right from within their browser. You can choose from a multitude of different building blocks, and build anything that you can think up. Not only that, but your creation isn’t randomly floating around the internet, instead assigned a virtual plot of land in Australia using Google Maps.

Once you fire up Build you’ll be able to see a zoomed out map of Australia. As you search the continent and zoom in to different spots, you’ll see different creations from netizens that you can interact with or simply observe. If you want to go about building your own creation, you can choose your own plot of land or have the map randomly select somewhere in Australia.

After you’re finished, your final build is submitted to Google for approval, just to make sure anything naughty doesn’t slip through. Build has launched in Australia first, with New Zealand next on the list. After that, Google will open it up to even more countries so that you can build on more familiar territories.

[via The Next Web]

Google Build lets you play with Lego in Chrome is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Hidden away within Google’s X laboratory, where all kinds of secret projects are underway, its engineers have been working on creating an artificial brain. With 16,000 computer processors and freedom to learn whatever it chooses from the internet, though, it turns out that the brain does just what you do online: watch cat videos. More »

Google and Apple’s relationship is not exactly the most cordial, considering how they have been slugging it out for a few years already over the smartphone scene between the iOS and Android platforms. Google has not severed their ties to Apple completely though, as both companies do have mutually beneficial reasons to stick to their relationship. Today, we hear that the Gmail app for iOS has received notification center support – one of the most requested features to date. Apart from full notification center support, you are also able to send messages from your alternate email addresses in addition to experiencing an improved login procedure.

The Gmail app for iOS is said to be fully integrated with Notification Center now, where it will be able to support banners, alerts and lock screen options. Not only that, notifications are said to be very fast now, which is up to 5x faster compared to the previous version. In order to send mail from alternate email addresses, just make sure an alternate sender address has been configured in Gmail on your desktop and you’re good to go. The login process has also improved, letting you remain logged in for as long as you like.

How do you like the new Gmail for iOS?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Court dismisses Apple’s suit against Motorola , Google launches security warnings for suspected state-sponsored attacks in Gmail,

Happy Monday, everyone. As we roll into the final week of June, there’s one major thing to watch – Google’s I/O conference, the annual event where we get all the major Google/Android announcements. Until those fully trickle in, though, here’s what made news today – Xbox Kinect $99 deal starts today, T-Mobile customers consider Galaxy S III vs Galaxy Note, and Apple releases iOS 6 beta 2 to developers. That’s just the beginning. Read on for more stories…

Featured: So our featured articles usually either take a look at a specific product or at a major event or announcement that is just hitting the airwaves. Today’s features fall into the latter category. Up first we have a column from our Chris Burns – Facebook Find Friends Nearby is a symptom of a larger social disease. And also, another column from SlashGear’s Chris Davies – Apple, Microsoft, now Google: I/O 2012 closes the mobility triptych.

Dollar General, Mars, & Helicopters: Have you ever seen a stranger mash-up of headlines before? It’s not often Dollar General comes into our scope. In fact, I’d venture to guess that it has been never. Until now. T-Mobile teams with Dollar General stores for monthly 4G and prepaid services. And moving right along into exciting space news – Mars curiosity landing sequence demonstrated by NASA. And if that wasn’t cool enough for you – Human-powered helicopter breaks world record.

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: June 25, 2012 is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.