Update: Added official app description and Glassware directory link.
CamFind’s technology is exciting because it’s a big step toward truly accurate and reliable visual search, and while their Android app has been on the Play Store (and the App Store) for quite some time now, it’s been a long time coming for the app’s launch on Google Glass.
First shown off to the world in September of last year, CamFind—and its ability to recognize most objects in your daily life and give you more information about them hands-free—is finally making its way to the Glassware Directory today.
Google has said repeatedly since the company graduated the project out of Google[x] that new iterations of Glass will indeed be coming at some point in the future, and that the team behind the wearable display device is still “committed to Glass.” But how is Google going to approach the product going forward?
According to an adviser to Tony Fadell (the previous Apple product executive who now oversees the project), the device is not going to get the same public experimentation treatment that the first version did, and Fadell won’t be releasing the next version of Glass until it’s “perfect.”
Cyanogen announced on Monday that it has enabled nightly releases of CyanogenMod 12 based on Android 5.0.1 Lollipop. The company also confirmed that its more stable “M” release of the custom ROM is 85% complete. CyanogenMod 12 supports a limited number of Android devices at this time, including the OnePlus One and Moto G. Expand Expanding Close
HP has quietly launched a new version of the Chromebook 14 (via OMGChrome), a laptop the company launched earlier this year that was met with much criticism over its less-than-perfect screen. Now, with a more expensive revised version of that device (but the others aren’t going anywhere, obviously) being available, customers have the option of going with a touchscreen Chrome experience and slightly improved specs over its little brothers. HP said that it would be coming soon at the launch of the Chromebook 14, and it looks like company has now followed through with that promise.
Google announced an initiative called Android One earlier this year that intends to bring some affordable smartphones to emerging markets, and now the Mountain View company says that the program is expanding beyond India (where it launched earlier this year in September). As noted on the company’s Asia Pacific Blog, the next few countries that will be getting Android One are three of India’s neighbors: Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
In these countries — with a combined population of over 200 million people — a wide range of manufacturers and network partners such as Banglalink will begin to sell Android One smartphones. In addition to Micromax, Karbonn and Spice, Bangladesh’s own Symphony will launch their first Android One phone with the Symphony Roar A50. All these devices will give people a high quality mobile experience for an affordable price, running stock-Android with updates from Google.
This is the company’s first step at the “next 5 billion people” it says, with these three countries comprising more than 200 million of the world’s population. A variety of manufacturers will soon begin selling Android One devices in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, including Micromax, Karbonn and Spice. But Google also says that Bangladesh-based manufacturer Symphony will be also be launching their first Android One device dubbed the Symphony Roar A50.
Recently, Karbonn committed to a long-term partnership with Android One in India, and it looks like the company is ready to push some high quality, affordable phones to a few new countries.
It’s been a long time coming, but the maker of the famed Minecraft has released its much-anticipated card-collecting game, Scrolls. It’s been about 18 months since the game first entered beta, but during that time Mojang has spent countless hours perfecting the card-based strategy game that intends to give players an experience that mashes both card trading and board games into one medieval-themed adventure.
Here are the game’s main features according to the app’s description:
A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE: Building your army is only half the battle. Develop strategies and take control of the battlefield. The best bits of card and board games, combined.
BUILD YOUR ARMY: We currently feature over 350 scrolls spread across 4 unique factions. You can mix and match them as you please.
PLAY SOLO, OR WITH FRIENDS: Scrolls includes single player challenges along with online competitive and casual play.
CHAT AND TRADE: Trade with other scrolldiers on the black market, or spend your hard-earned gold in our store. Chat with other players both in and out of battle. Please be nice.
CROSS PLATFORM: Develop your skills and scrolls library by playing on Tablet, PC, or Mac. Battle with others, no matter which platform they’re playing on.
JUDGEMENT MODE: Build a unique deck in Judgement mode, then see how it fares against other’s creations.
The game is available today on the Play Store to download for free, but freemium content is available in-game ranging in price from $4.99 to $19.99 per item—and unlocking the full version of the game is going to run you that $4.99 price tag. Additionally, the game is available for Mac and PC and you can try it out for free as long as you have a Mojang account. Anyone who participated in Alpha or Beta testing of the game, or purchased Scrolls at any point in the past, will get the full version for free.
Mojang has said that an iPad version is also on its way, but won’t be available until sometime in 2015.
Following the announce of the next major version of Android Wear this morning, Google has today announced that the official API for Android Wear watch faces is available to developers. The company has also published a video to help give some guidelines to developers on how to take advantage of the API and help them get started.
We’re pleased to announce that the official Android Wear Watch Face API is now available for developers. Watch faces give users even more ways to express their personal style, while creating an opportunity for developers to customize the most prominent UI feature of the watches. Watch faces have been the most requested feature from users and developers alike, and we can’t wait to see what you build for them.
Google asks that developers have their watch faces transitioned to the new API by January 31st, 2015, after which point Google says they plan to completely remove support for watch faces that aren’t built with the API.
You can check out the official watch face API over at the Google Developers website. You’ll need Android Studio 1.0.0 or higher, an Android device with version 4.3 (API level 18) or higher, and an Android Wear watch with version 5.0 (API level 21) or higher to start building faces.
Blackphone, the Android-powered smartphone that aims to be the most secure handset in the world, has announced a slew of new features for an upcoming revamp of its PrivatOS operating system. Most notable is the addition of “Spaces,” which will provide users an easy way to separate apps and secure accounts & data between multiple “environments.” Blackphone has also announced the launch of what it claims is the world’s very first privacy-focused app marketplace…
VLC (Video LAN Client) has long been one of the choice media players for Android users, but—while every release has been basically stable—the company hasn’t been in any rush to push the app out of beta and on to version 1.0. Today, that finally happened, and the update packs a bunch of other goodies including fixes for ARM V8 processors and Android 5.0 Lollipop.
According to the app’s Play Store listing, version 1.0 includes the following:
This release fixes ARMv8 processors, Android 5.0 crashes and minor improvements. The 0.9.x series is major release with hardware decoding and a new interface available in dark or white colors. It integrates DVD iso and menu support, an equalizer, playlist management, Widi screens support and updated SD cards detection. Hardware acceleration is now enabled by default on 4.3+ and has better subtitles support. Software decoding has been accelerated too.
As mentioned by Android Police, it doesn’t appear that the 1.0 release includes previously announced Chromecast support. The app, which has always been known for how many video and audio formats it can play, is basically the Android go-to solution if you have some kind of media that you aren’t sure how to get working. It’s available on the Play Store right now for free.
It appears as if having just one super-powerful and super-low-priced flagship Android phone wasn’t enough, because a company called “xodiom” has just popped up out of thin air (via PhoneArena) and launched a Snapdragon 805-powered budget smartphone with decked out specs. And while the entry price doesn’t quite dip as low as that of the 16 GB OnePlus, it appears that this phone might be a worthy contender.
The launches of Google’s new Nexus devices have been kind of a mess to say the least, and while more people have gotten the opportunity to purchase them because they’re being launched on more carriers, this also means that the rollout wasn’t as simple as just listing them on Google Play. But as of today, some amount of progress is being made, and those in the UK now have a chance to get their hands on the Nexus 6 via O2. Sadly, though, the launch of the Nexus 9 on T-Mobile in the U.S. has hit a bit of a snag, being delayed for an unknown amount of time.
Google Glass in its current form has been on the market for going on two years now, and besides a couple of minor hardware iterations, the hardware—and its huge beta-test $1,500 price tag—has stayed much the same. A couple of different patents have surfaced in the past showing what direction the physical design of the device may be headed, but the latest one (via Quartz) seems the most plausible—and does the best job of not straying too far from the current “Explorer Edition.”
Following several rumors of a possible November 3rd release for Android 5.0 Lollipop, Google today confirmed the release date in a note to developers (via AndroidPolice). Expand Expanding Close
The Wall Street Journal has published a new report claiming that Google plans to release the Nexus 6 at some point this month. The article, citing three sources, is incredibly sparse on details, but does corroborate all of what we exclusively reported last month.
Thanks to various leaksover the past fewweeks, HTC’s Nexus 9 tablet has been all but confirmed. This morning, though, HTC’s president of North Asia Jack Tong reportedly told members of the press that the Nexus 9 is the company’s “commitment” to returning to the tablet market. This is significant because, despite all of the leaks, HTC has yet to formally acknowledge the existence of the tablet.
Google has pushed an update to Chrome OS this afternoon, bringing a variety of interesting new features to the stable channel. Of those packed in this update include the oft-requested ability to sign in to multiple Google accounts, a new “App info” page in the OS app launcher, the separation of the Settings page into its own window, and more.
As reported by Taiwanese publication Focus Taiwan, the CEO of Asus Jerry Shen has reportedly said in a media briefing that the company’s upcoming ZenWatch Android Wear-powered smartwatch will indeed be shipping at a price point below $200. Shen also mentioned that—as expected considering the device runs Android Wear—we’ll be seeing English-enabled voice recognition when the device goes on sale in October.
Google has announced the next major iteration of its Android operating system, simply being called “L” at the time of this post (and still no word yet on what the L will stand for). Headlining the release is a new “Material” design scheme that Google is calling “beautiful and bold.”
Oyster, a startup out of New York which lets you pay a subscription fee for access to books, has released an Android app after having been available on iOS since August of last year. It has appropriately gained a reputation of being the “Netflix of books,” allowing users to pay just $9.95 for unlimited access to over 500,000 ebooks, but also touts human curation as being one its most important features. Expand Expanding Close
Facebook Messenger for Android has been given an update, bringing the ability to send 15-second video clips through the app, as well as send even bigger thumbs-up graphics for when you just really, really like something that your friend said.
If you can believe it, Google Glass was announced nearly two years ago at Google I/O 2012, becoming available to “Explorers” for the steep price of $1,500. The device didn’t actually ship until nearly a year later, in February 2013, but multiple beta versions of Glass have been in these select few hands since. As for a date when the device would finally go public, Sergey Brin recently said at the Code Conference that Glass would be released this year “plus or minus,” leaving the question as open-ended as ever. Expand Expanding Close
Shop X, the Glassware brainchild of Glass Explorer Ryan Kopinksy, is a great way to create and view shopping lists on Google Glass. The app has been widely praised by the Glass community for quite some time, but it previously had to be sideloaded if you wanted to install it. No longer, as Shop X can now be grabbed on MyGlass along the likes of Noble Ackerson’s LynxFit and well-known apps like Foursquare and Facebook.
To use the app, all you have to do is say “Ok, Glass” followed by “Take a Note.” List as many items as you want across a wide variety of grocery categories, and then give the app a second to process the information. Once it’s done, you’ll receive cards on your Glass home screen that are made up of all the items you listed sorted into categories. Check out the video embedded below showing the basics of how the app works.
Shop X enables you to create your shopping list by voice command. The items in your shopping list are sorted by category and can be checked off whenever you are done with the category. Shop X will sync your shopping list with the cloud so you can access and manage it from any device.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 has been around for a bit more than a month now, but the much-expected ‘Active’ version of the phone was only just this morning released to the public—and, for better or for worse, it’s available exclusively at AT&T’s website and brick-and-mortar stores. Expand Expanding Close
BlackBerry has announced an upcoming release of its BBM client for Android devices that includes an easier signup flow and an improved process for adding new contacts.
The new simplified registration process will request only a name, password, and email address, as opposed to the current app which requires much more information. The update will also improve the process for adding new contacts. Currently users who get an invite need send their own PIN back to the other party so they can be mutual contacts. In the new version that step will be automated. Tapping the invitation link in the email will complete the entire process.
The update also adds new emoticons to the app’s existing selection. BlackBerry Messenger 2.2 will be available on the Google Play Store later tonight.
