Google debuted a product that basically no one saw coming at its big hardware event today: A camera called Clips. It’s not your typical camera, however – it’s designed essentially for passive use, as a way to help capture moments that you’d miss with a dedicated camera or your smartphone. Clips grabs “motion photos,” the new picture format that Google… Read More
A major use case of home assistants is obviously close integration with smart home products, but Home and Echo have both managed to make things a lot more confusing than they should be when it comes to turning on lights or accessing your home security system. Google is trying to rectify this and is starting by making Nest products a lot more friendly with Home. Now, seamless integration… Read More
Google first demoed Lens, its smart Google Assistant-connected image recognition app, at its I/O developer conference earlier this year. At the time, it was one of the highlights of the show, but like so many other announcements at the time, the company wasn’t quite ready to release it to the public yet and only said that it would arrive “soon.” That was in May.
As Google… Read More
Google unveiled the new Pixel 2 XL smartphone today, and the early leaks proved pretty much accurate: It’s a larger screened smartphone with a new body design that mostly eliminates the front bezels, with a back that bears a two-segment design with a glass upper portion and metal covering the remainder of the body. The smartphone’s front face is a big improvement over the… Read More
They say sequels are never quite as good as the original, but after releasing one of 2017’s best phones, Google’s hoping lighting will strike a second time with the Pixel 2. The company is teaming up with HTC once again — the runaway success of last year’s Pixel was clearly a driving force in its decision to buy the company’s mobile division earlier this year.… Read More
The Chromebook Pixel brand for Google’s most high-end and costly Chromebooks is dead, but you can now say hello to its replacement: the Pixelbook. The Pixelbook fits right into the (short) line of Chromebook Pixels in that it’s a pretty luxurious Chrome OS device that starts at $999 with 128GB of storage. Prices will top out at $1649 for the 512GB version. It also takes its… Read More
Google is bringing new features to Google Home so that kids and families can get more out of it. The device will have some new kid-friendly features that brings story time and gaming to the device. Thanks to a new partnership with Disney, kids can enjoy some of the company’s IP branding from Lightning McQueen to Star Wars. The company is also working with partners like Warner Brothers… Read More
Google Home is getting bigger, in more ways than one: Google announced a few updates for its smart home speaker line, and one is the Home Max, a larger version that packs in stereo speakers and more premium looks and materials.
The new, larger Home speaker is clearly intended to be an answer to critics who suggested the original Home lacked good audio quality (myself included) by providing… Read More
To the surprise of no one, Google today announced a smaller version of its Google Home smart speaker. The Google Home Mini looks like a small hockey puck and will retail for $50. At this size and price, you can’t expect great audio quality, but in return you get access to all the wisdom of the Google Assistant in a small package that weighs less than a pound and doesn’t break… Read More
Google announced on stage a few numbers to update its progress on its hardware program – the company said that it’s sold over 55 million Chromecast devices, including Chromecasts and hardware with Chromecast built-in and that it has built up a database of over 100 million answers for users via Google Assistant, its voice-powered AI software. The other success metric that Google… Read More
Oracle has always had a swagger that reflects the public persona of its bombastic leader, Larry Ellison, but over the last several years, as the company has transitioned to the cloud, it has required a transformation to one that is softer and more customer-centric. Mind you, this was a company that was the poster child for vendor lock-in the 90s and early 2000s. They knew you were looking for… Read More
Azure Functions, Microsoft’s platform for building serverless applications, has long supported a variety of programming languages but it’s adding an important one today: Java. Fittingly, the company made this announcement at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. As Microsoft notes in today’s announcement, Java support was one of the top feature requests for Azure… Read More
After back-to-back events from Apple and Amazon, it’s finally Google’s time to shine — and it sounds like the company’s got some big things planned for today’s happening at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco. This time last year, the company showed off a number additions to its hardware offerings, and we’re expecting pretty big follow-ups. We’ve… Read More
Google’s big event is today. And this time, it’s all about new devices — the company should unveil a handful of new hardware products. The event will start at 9 AM in San Francisco, 12 PM in New York, 5 PM in London, 6 PM in Paris. And we already know what to expect. The big elephant in the room is Google’s new flagship Android phone, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. It… Read More
French telecom company Orange is launching a bank. But it turns out that launching a bank is harder than expected. After many delays, Orange CEO Stéphane Richard finally announced that Orange Bank will be live on November 2 — La Tribune first reported the launch details. At some point, Orange realized that many people control their bank accounts from mobile apps. That’s why… Read More
The UK government has once again bared its anti-technology teeth in public, leaning especially heavily on messaging platform WhatsApp for its use of end-to-end encryption security tech, and calling it out for enabling criminals to communicate in secret. Read More
The Sonos One is a new speaker designed from the ground-up for voice interaction via Alexa. The speaker is similar to the current home speakers Sonos sells but six internal microphones allow you to speak to the speaker without extra voice control hardware. Pre-orders are starting now for $199. Today’s new speakers will ship soon. The system uses echo-cancellation tech to hear you over… Read More
Alexa is officially the first voice assistant to be available on Sonos, a move that turns the wireless speaker product into a voice-controlled sound system. Originally announced a year ago, Sonos has been working “day and night” with Amazon to implement the features. Alexa on Sonos will be available as a beta software update today. You will be able to control your speakers using… Read More
Bluecore, the automated marketing platform for ecommerce brands, has today announced the close of a $35 million Series C round of funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors including Georgian Partners, FirstMark Capital, and Felicis Ventures. As part of the deal, NVP’s Scott Beechuk will join the board of directors at Bluecore. When… Read More
