Hasta La Gadget!

Google’s last Android-centric event, Google I/O in the middle of last year, treated us to a pair of delectable demos that may now finally be turning into mobile realities. One was a web client for the Android Market with OTA installations — you just browse to an app you want to install while on your desktop and choose to push it to your Android device — and the other was a cloud-based music backup and streaming service. The latter has since picked up the moniker of Google Music in subsequent rumors, and today both are receiving some speculative support for a launch at tomorrow’s Honeycomb event. Android and Me has an insider source claiming the web-based Android Market is finally ready to roll out, whereas BusinessWeek reports Andy Rubin is heading up Google’s digital music team and also has software ready for release, potentially at some point this month. Given the importance of both new additions, it’s highly logical for Google to at least announce and show them off once more tomorrow. Then we can get back to waiting for the next Android update.

Google Music and web-based Android Market could be announced tomorrow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTML5, JavaScript and a tiny pinch of Flash. Those are your ingredients for building one of the neatest, simplest websites we’ve come across in a long time. Conductor, as its maker Alexander Chen dubs it, is a visualization built on New York‘s publicly available subway schedule API. It shows the progress of the Big Apple’s underground carriers throughout the day and garnishes the experience with a delightful musical trick every time two lines cross. You can see it on video after the break or just hit the source link and experience it for yourself.

Continue reading New York subway schedule turned into a beautiful, musical visualization (video)

New York subway schedule turned into a beautiful, musical visualization (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, come on, Google! If you’re going to give us desktop notifiers for our favorite email and chat clients, you’ve got to play nice and let us have them on more than your own browser, right? To be fair to the Chrome maker, it’s standardizing the code it’s used in its new HTML5 alerts so that other browsers can soon use it too, but as of today, you’ll need to use the Google-sanctioned webscape navigator if you want its sweet new pop-ups on your desktop. We gave them a quick try and they’re delightfully quick, with Gtalk message alerts updating themselves to the latest one received instead of stacking up and threatening your sanity. Hit the source link to learn how to enable the new notifications.

Google adds HTML5 Gmail and Gtalk notifications for the desktop, makes you envy Chrome users originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ever been freaked out by an online ad that seemed to know you that little bit too well? It’s the result of good old advertisers tracking your net-navigating habits and delivering targeted commercials to your eyeballs, but it can be prevented. Both Google and Mozilla have stepped up (or perhaps been pushed by the FTC) to try and tackle this issue of pernicious tracking cookies, but they’ve gone about it in different ways. The Chrome solution is a Keep My Opt-Outs browser extension that remembers the sites you don’t want personalized information from, while Firefox will start beaming out a Do Not Track HTTP header that should be respected by advertisers and result in you receiving generic, repetitive ads. The important commonality between the two is that they don’t rely on you preparing a cookie file with all your anti-advertiser bile contained within it (which was the FTC’s original, somewhat impractical idea). Google intends to open-source its extension and bring it to other browsers as well, though obviously it’s taking care of Chrome first, which can benefit from the add-on right now.

Chrome and Firefox adding new opt-out features to prevent third-party advertisers from tracking you originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink New York Times  |  Google Public Policy Blog, First Person Cookie  | Email this | Comments

Remember when the UK started distributing free laptops to poor schoolchildren in order to encourage them to get online? Well, a new, more frugal government is now in charge, and while the original scheme has been scrapped, today we’re hearing of alternative plans to help economically disadvantaged people leap onto the worldwide surfer’s web. The coalition government intends to offer £98 ($156) computers — which include an LCD monitor, keyboard, mouse, warranty, and a dedicated helpline — paired with subsidized £9 ($14) per month internet connections in its effort to show that the web doesn’t have to seem (or be) unaffordable. The cheapest machines will be refurbished units running open-source Linux distros, meaning that if this Race Online 2012 trial turns out well, we could see a whole new group of Linux loyalists rising up. The more the merrier!

UK aims to improve access to technology, internet with £98 Linux PCs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 09:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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