Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung looks to be doing everything in its power to make sure Smart TVs are a success. Today the company has announced SDK 3.5 for its Smart TV platform, which will allow developers to tap into features like voice and gesture recognition and add the functionality into their own apps. Samsung has made some more minor changes that should help the development process too.

The biggest change for developers will be the change of the IDE. Previously if you were coding for the Smart TV, you were restricted to Samsung’s own IDE which is said to be less than ideal. Samsung has now added support for Eclipse as the IDE, which should be easier for developers going forward. Remote Control now has its own separate process, and app developers can now change the input method from within the emulator.

Samsung has high hopes for Smart TVs, extolling the virtues of the platform back at CES 2012. The company has been shipping its 2012 lineup for several months now, and is hoping users, as well as developers, will jump onboard thanks to the voice and gesture recognition features. We spent a little bit of time with one of Samsung’s Smart TVs to give both features a whirl, so make sure to check out our hands-on to see how it all holds up.

Samsung Smart TV SDK 3.5 exposes voice and gesture recognition is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Remember that Android SDK Recon Instruments finally unveiled for its heads-up display goggles? Well the company was showing off the fruits of its labor here at Google I/O 2012 with two demos — specifically two-way Facebook integration and augmented reality using a Contour camera. In the first demo, the goggles are paired over Bluetooth with an app running on an Android phone. Each time you jump while snowboarding or skying, the accelerometer data from the goggles is sent to the handset which posts a graphic to Facebook showing the distance, height and duration of your flight. Any comments made to the post are then immediately relayed back to the heads-up display. The second demo uses a Contour camera attached to the goggles and paired via Bluetooth. As you look around, the output from the camera appears on the heads-up display augmented with labels showing the location and distance of the nearby train stations based on the compass and GPS data from the goggles. Pretty cool, eh? Check out the gallery below and hit the break for our two hands-on videos.

Continue reading Recon goggles gain Facebook integration and augmented reality at Google I/O (hands-on video)

Recon goggles gain Facebook integration and augmented reality at Google I/O (hands-on video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Glass may be grabbing the headlines at IO this week, but with Explorer Edition developer devices not shipping until 2013, it might be worth looking elsewhere for your head-up display fix. Recon Instruments has just the thing, with a new Android SDK for the MOD Live eyepiece that will allow developers to create their own applications that float in the user’s eyeline.

The MOD Live is a complex little piece of kit, with various sensors integrated: an altimeter, barometer, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyro, 3-axis magnetometer, and a temperature sensor. There’s also Bluetooth Smart Ready (aka 4.0) and GPS, a d-pad for navigation, and of course the eyepiece itself.

Power is from an 800MHz TI OMAP3 Cortex-A8 processor paired with 256MB RAM and 512MB of flash space, of which 180MB shows up as mass storage. ”Because our SDK is pretty much completely the Android SDK, creating an HUD app takes about the same effort as a regular Android app” Recon claims.

The facility for the MOD Live to take advantage of basic http pull and push is due to be added in the next week or so, and Recon plans to give away ten free eyepieces (and subsidize a further 100 by 50-percent) to encourage developers to jump onboard. Normally, the MOD Live is priced at $399.99.

You can sign up to be considered as a developer here, and see an example of an app – detailed here – intended for skiers in the video below.

Can’t wait for Google Glass? Recon’s MOD Live has you covered today is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google looks to be getting serious in its quest for online storage, announcing some new features at the Day 2 I/O keynote that will take on competitors like Dropbox and Evernote. One of those is in the introduction of Google Drive SDK 2.0, which will allow app developers for Android and iOS to implement Drive functionality straight into their mobile apps.

Developers will be able to implement uploads, downloads, or simple file edits within their own applications by leveraging the SDK. It mimics similar functionality that Dropbox has been offering developers for some time. On top of that, the programming interface has seen some tweaks, now coping with conversions and revisions.

Google Drive SDK 2.0 is up for download now, and some apps have already been updated to take use of the new functionality. Google says that others will be updated in due course. If you’re a developer and want the full details as well as the SDK, head on over here.

Google releases Drive SDK 2.0 is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has opted to deliver Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as an OTA update to the ICS already on the Nexus phones and tablets it just handed everyone at I/O 2012, and there’s a manual download link available too. As Android Police notes, only GSM phones running the IMM330D firmware will take the update (which you probably don’t have, although a fresh phone from the initial Google Play run might work.) With this release already in the wild it’s surely only a matter of time before various third parties open it up to a wider variety of hardware. As always with early and somewhat untested software YMMV, keep an eye on those XDA Developers threads for the latest updates.

Update: Just that quickly, an SDK port has already popped up for the HTC One X. Of course, it’s described as unstable and the author has no plans to try to fix the numerous problems but if you’re desperate to see Jelly Bean you can, you just probably shouldn’t.

Update 2: And almost as quickly, a rooted version for ClockWorkMod Recovery and ROM Manager has appeared. Check the latest thread for all the details.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean preview download is live, probably won’t work on your Galaxy Nexus — yet (Update) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 23:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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