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August 10, 2015August 10, 2015

Leaked ‘Warcraft’ Trailer: What Google and Legendary Pictures Have Planned Will Blow Your Mind

As the San Diego Comic Con starts to take off, there is already surprising news coming from Legendary Pictures and Google.

The production studio and tech giant are teaming up to bring director Duncan Jones’ Warcraft to virtual reality. However, there are a few caveats. The VR footage does not include footage of the film. Also the viewing experience is not similar to “traditional” virtual reality viewings.

“The scene is viewable only through Google Cardboard, a headset made of — you guessed it — corrugated paper that cradles a user’s smartphone, letting them peer through a pair of cheap lenses for no-frills VR experiences. Called The Skies of Azeroth, the short interactive scene puts viewers on the back of a flying eagle as it traverses a detailed fantasy city called Stormwind,” reports Nick Statt for CNET.com.

Legendary Pictures started this partnership during 2013’s promotion of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and there will also be a Crimson Peak VR experience at the con.

According to Legendary vice president of theatrical strategy Barnaby Legg, “VR is a very nascent medium, and I think all of us in the entertainment business are dipping our toe in and kind of seeing where it goes. Our view at the moment is that we feel we’re in the experience business, and as we learned last year VR is an amazing way of expanding the universe of our films and really immerse our audiences.”

In regards to Warcraft, the companies have yet to release a teaser online, a trailer, and there are very few promotional stills out there. The film will bring to life the fantasy and sci-fi world of Azeroth on June 10, 2016. So the DIY VR sets are the first in a year’s worth of promotional buildup.

July 30, 2015July 30, 2015

Carnegie Mellon to Form ‘Living Lab’ Through Google Initiative

A team led by Anind Dey at Carnegie Mellon University was awarded half a million dollars to turn the campus into a hot-spot where apps, sensors and user-developed tools could serve as a small part of Google’s Open Web of Things initiative.

In December, Google announced that its idea of the Internet of Things would allow people to connect everywhere. “Imagine a world in which access to networked technology defies the constraints of desktops, laptops or smartphones.”

According to Jeremy Hsu from IEEE.org, “the $500,000 awarded to the university coalition will help create an Internet of Things (IoT) platform called GloTTO that aims to create a complete interoperable system of IoT technologies. The platform would also allow researchers to figure out how to create a secure system that protects personal privacy in a sensor-filled environment.”

As good as this sounds, issues of privacy may be a concern for students on the campus. So the university will have a team working on keeping data safe.

“Dey sees the project as succeeding with massive amounts of cheap sensors to elevate ‘dumb’ objects on campus to sources of information,” reports Heidi Hoopes for Gizmag.com.

These dumb objects could be a trash can or a copying machine.

At the moment, other schools like Cornell, Stanford and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will be helping Carnegie Mellon in the early stages of the work.

July 3, 2015July 3, 2015

Google Apologizes for Racist Auto-Tag in Photo App

Google’s new photo app introduced in May has rubbed many users the wrong way with a defective auto-tag system.

After the app tagged two Black users “gorillas,” Google has been in a mad dash to make things right. This is how Twitter user Jacky Alcine responded to the app:

Google Photos, y’all f*cked up. My friend’s not a gorilla. pic.twitter.com/SMkMCsNVX4

— diri noir avec banan (@jackyalcine) June 29, 2015

Yonatan Zunger, the chief architect of social at Google, contacted the young lady thanking her for addressing the issue and pointing out the problem. “Zunger says that Google has had similar issues with facial recognition due to inadequate analysis of skin tones and lighting, ” reports Loren Grush for The Verge.

However, this racist use of labels has been a problem in other Google products like Google Maps.

@jackyalcine Holy f*ck. G+ CA here. No, this is not how you determine someone’s target market. This is 100% Not OK.

— Yonatan Zunger (@yonatanzunger) June 29, 2015

“Earlier this year, searches for ‘ni**er house’ globally and searches for ‘ni**er king’ in Washington, D.C. turned up results for the White House, the residence of U.S. President Barack Obama. Both at that time and earlier this week, Google apologized and said that it was working to fix the issue,” according to Jana Kasperkevic for The Guardian.

As the issue of race becomes a dominant issue to the public, technology should not be part of the discussions and debates.

At this moment the “gorilla” label has been removed from the app.

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015

Gmail’s New ‘Undo Send’ Option Ends Regretful Messages

Email can be a useful tool for work communication and file-sharing, but if users send a “bad” email with regrettable content, it could ruin their career. A new Gmail feature allows the sender to stop the email in its tracks.

“It lets you un-send an email for a short while after sending. Of course, it isn’t reaching out and snatching the email back — it just holds the email for a brief period sufficient for you to evaluate your regrets — but it can still be a life-saver. This feature has actually been available since March of 2009, but it has been hidden away in the Labs section of Gmail’s settings,” reports
Kristofer Wouk for Digital Trends.

In order to activate the feature, Gmail users with the beta version of the unsend option will have to go to general tabs and click on “Enable Undo Send.”

One cool aspect the feature has is the option to choose time intervals of the unsent email. What that means is that in the settings of the unsend feature you can set the wait to send time to 5 seconds, 10, 20 or 30 depending on how safe you want to be.

This feature does not erase a bad email. It just slows it down so that you can edit it and clean it up if need be.

May 18, 2015May 18, 2015

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Coming to Consumers in 2020

Google’s self-driving cars are just a few of the “top secret” projects the mega company has been working on in the past decade. The first working prototype hits the roads this summer to show the world Google’s commitment to the project.

According to The Associated Press, “This prototype is the first vehicle built from scratch for the purpose of self-driving, Google says. It looks like a Smart car with a shiny black bowler hat to hide its sensors, and it can drive, brake and recognize road hazards without human intervention. It has more capabilities than the prototype Google introduced last May, which was so rudimentary it had fake headlights.”

The prototype has been involved in 11 accidents. Though these incidents have been minor, there is clearly more work to be done.

The news of the prototype began Wednesday when Google showed it to the public during a demonstration on its campus in Mountain View, California.

“With 360 degrees of awareness, the self-driving cars are gaining new insights into dangerous driving behaviors, including drifting lanes and red light running,” reports ABC News digital reporter Alyssa Newcomb.

The fascinating aspect to the project is that 20 self-driving cars has gathered an estimated 100,000 miles driving in urban areas.

April 2, 2015April 2, 2015

Google Expands Chrome-Based Empire With Portable Stick That Can Turn Nearly Any TV Into a Computer

After celebrating four years of Chromebook success and experiencing the rising popularity of Chromecast, Google has unveiled another device that could add to its Chrome-centric tech takeover.

Google recently announced the release of the Asus Chromebit, a device that adds a new level to portability when it comes to computers.

The small, sleek dongle has the ability to turn nearly any TV screen into a fully-functioning computer, and it will cost consumers less than $100.

This differs from Google’s Chromecast, which is anchored in useful apps as opposed to providing full browser-based computer capabilities.

To be clear, the Chromebit is many things — convenient, stylish, affordable and impressive overall — but it wouldn’t quite make the cut as being innovative.

Google is a tad bit late to the computer-in-my-pocket party after Intel announced its Intel Computer Stick back in January. Not to mention China-based companies have been pushing out Android HMDI dongle-computers for almost a year now.

The Intel and China-based versions of the devices boast Windows 8.1 operating systems and Rockchip RK3288 processors, respectively.

Google, after already utilizing the same Rockchip processors for its Chromebook, will continue to hold on to its Rockchip ties while adding a list of additional, impressive features.

“In addition to your Rockship RK3288 (with quad-core Mali 760 graphics) you get 2GB of RAM, 16GB of solid state storage, 2×2 dual-band 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a single full-size USB 2.0 port on one end,” Gizmodo reports.

While Google may have lagged slightly behind its competitors when it comes to the new dongles, the tech giant dealt with its tardiness in its usual ways — be fashionably late.

Of all the dongle-computers being introduced to consumers, Chromebit is the most aesthetically pleasing.

It comes in three different colors and flaunts a sleek, functional design that even Intel missed the mark on.

The Chromebit boasts a swivel design that ensures users can plug the device into any HDMI socket without much fuss or stress.

It’s also priced much lower than its Intel rival, which touts a price tag of roughly $150.

The new device is slated to hit shelves this summer and is sure to be followed by a host of other tech giants tossing their own dongle-computers into the ring.

Perhaps this tech battle will heed more impressive competitors than the much-hyped and quickly dismissed battle of the smartwatches.

March 26, 2015March 26, 2015

6 Tech Giants That Signed Fat Checks to Help Black Students in STEM but Still Lack Diversity in Their Own Companies

Google

Google has consistently donated to a variety of different causes aimed at boosting diversity in the tech space, including the Black Girls Code initiative. Google donated $190,000 to the initiative in 2014 but never did much for increasing diversity in its own staff. That same year, Google’s diversity report revealed that roughly 79 percent of the tech giant’s staff across the globe was male. Only about 2 percent of the staff was Black.

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March 20, 2015March 20, 2015