With first-quarter shipments exceeding Macs in the United States, Chromebooks are very popular. Schools and enterprises choose Chromebooks for their very streamlined use case: low cost, fast boot security, simplicity and ease of administration.Chromebooks just got a little more complicated, but for the better, with Google’s announcement that the Android Play Store will be available on Chromebooks and that Android apps will run on the Chrome operating system. The million Android apps—which include popular apps such as Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Word and Skype and games such as Clash of Clans and Angry Birds—will remedy the Chromebook’s relative app sparsity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Massive amounts of data is being collected, but isn’t being used to generate business growth, says a public body that has recently completed funding a 2.5-year research project on the subject.Big data should be used in an entrepreneurial way to create “profitable information-based products and services,” says British government agency Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in a press release.At the moment, it’s just being “hoarded.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's a good chance your tastebuds would tell you when you're drinking stale beer, but now science has come to the rescue to spare them that pain.You can thank the chemists at Spain's Complutense University of Madrid, who have developed a sensor and Android app that can tell you when you shouldn't even bother having a sip.To monitor a beer's freshness, brewers often use chromatography techniques to measure indicative chemicals including furfural, a compound that appears during the aging process and gives beer a stale taste. The problem is, those techniques can be time-consuming and expensive.In this new work, published recently in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the researchers devised a system including sensor discs that detect the presence of furfural in beer. Made from a polymer similar to what's used to manufacture contact lenses, the sensors change color from yellow to pink when they come into contact with a beer containing furfural.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Routers and other wireless devices made by Ubiquiti Networks have recently been infected by a worm that exploits a year-old remote unauthorized access vulnerability.The attack highlights one of the major issues with router security: the fact that the vast majority of them do not have an auto update mechanism and that their owners hardly ever update them manually.The worm creates a backdoor administrator account on vulnerable devices and then uses them to scan for and infect other devices on the same and other networks."This is an HTTP/HTTPS exploit that doesn't require authentication," Ubiquiti said in an advisory. "Simply having a radio on outdated firmware and having its http/https interface exposed to the Internet is enough to get infected."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
“It’s time to take a stand,” says Redditor Grnslv, posting at r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt, “a subreddit dedicated specifically for Information Technology rage!”The stand in this case: opposition to compensation measured in calories. His screen capture explains: Redditor Grnslv
Not everyone participating in the ensuing discussion was a hardliner.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The announcement of the Google Home intelligent assistant was an unexpected but not really a surprise announcement. Leaks did not ruin the surprise, but rather Google’s open approach to innovation did. Through participation in open forums and open source projects, published papers, and the release of application programming interfaces (APIs), Google publicly signals its direction.Google Home was built using the Google Assistant software platform that was also announced this week. Think of Google Home generally as a hardware competitor to Amazon Echo, and Google Assistant is a software platform like Google Now but much more context aware and intelligent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Google executives say the company isn't the consumer-oriented business of its youth.Now, they say, Google is focused on the enterprise.But some users and industry analysts attending Google I/O here this week said they didn't see evidence of a business focus at the developer conference."You don't see it in the announcements. You don't really see it in the sessions," said Jorel Perez, a San Antonio-based mobile web developer who works for a Fortune 500 financial services company. "When we go to a conference, we have to say why we're going and why it will be beneficial. I would like to be able to hear something here that I could go back and say, 'Here's something that will immediately bring value across the enterprise.' That's just not going to happen."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google I/O thinks outside the boxImage by Blair Hanley FrankThis year, Google took a different approach to its Google I/O developers conference. First of all, it was mostly outdoors, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California. (Fun fact about Shoreline: While now it’s literally in Google’s backyard, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was an original partner in launching the concert venue with legendary promoter Bill Graham, and Woz’s name still adorns one of the boxes that the press sat in during the keynote.) And while previous Google I/O keynotes have featured moonshots like Google Glass, this year’s keynote was pretty down-to-earth. No self-driving cars or alien-looking wearables, just new versions of Android and Android Wear, plus some cross-platform apps and a voice-activated device for the home. In fact, a lot of the announcements should even be interesting to Apple fans, from new apps to a huge selection of smartwatches. Here’s what you should care about, and when you can expect it all to launch.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google wrapped up its annual I/O keynote presentation on Wednesday after unveiling its version of FaceTime, its version of Apple Watch Complications, and its version of Siri on steroids. But Google also announced a few new features, especially as part of Android N and Android Wear, that Apple users have not experienced yet.Here are a few features that we hope Apple “borrows” from Google for its upcoming iOS and watchOS. You can read about all the new Android N and Android Wear 2.0 features on our sister site Greenbot.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s bringing its entire Android mobile app library to Chromebooks – the company announced today at its annual I/O developer conference, thanks to an innovative system of containerization.Every Android app on Google Play will run on Chrome OS devices – as long as their hardware is compatible. (For example, an app requiring a cellular modem might not work on most Chromebooks.) A list of compatible devices will be maintained here. The feature will be rolled out to the developer channel within the next couple of weeks, and will be in the hands of users “later this year.”+MORE FROM GOOGLE I/O 2016: Google declares war on copy and paste + Google dives into the future with a focus on A.I. +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s ready to kick Control+C and Control+V to the curb – the company on Thursday announced new APIs and new enterprise partnerships today at its annual I/O developer conference, designed to simplify common workflows and make its Google Apps product line more competitive.The new partners include big business software names like Sage, Salesforce, and ProsperWorks, among others, and the new APIs allow for impressively complete integration with Google Apps, providing the potential for broad new feature sets.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Google dives into the future with a focus on A.I. + Google I/O 2016: Android N hits beta, boasts VR and moreTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Meet BB-8 - the app-enabled Droid that's as authentic as it is advanced. BB-8 has something unlike any other robot - an adaptive personality that changes as you play. Based on your interactions, BB-8 will show a range of expressions and even perk up when you give voice commands. Set it to patrol and watch your Droid explore autonomously, make up your own adventure and guide BB-8 yourself, or create and view holographic recordings. It currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews). With a regular list price of $149.99, you can buy it now with this deal for just $124.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Almost a quarter (21 percent) of Americans would rather give up sex than lose Wi-Fi for a month, and 10 percent would give up a friend than forego wireless connectivity.Those are just two of the findings in a survey conducted by a travel agency that runs digital detox tours.Digital detox vacations are trips where social media, smartphone and camera use is banned by the tour organizers. The idea is that a more in-the-moment experience is obtained when devices aren’t used.Intrepid Travel, which has four detox vacation tours lined up for this upcoming winter season, says there’s a market for vacations free from technology. And to prove it, the company commissioned a study.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google's Play Store for Android will be coming to Chrome OS, the lightweight operating system that powers Chromebook laptops, the company announced Thursday.That means Chromebook users will be able to download and install apps made for Android onto their Chromebooks, expanding the base of applications available for those devices. Prevously, Chromebooks were able to run only applications built for Chrome.It's an important enhancement for Chrome OS, which Google has been touting as the perfect operating system for schools and businesses, but which is lacking applications compared to Android. By bringing the two together, Google will expand the utility of both Android apps and Chromebooks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Application containers are all the buzz nowadays. They’re an easy way to package applications and their dependencies into Linux container boxes and run them anywhere – public cloud, a private data center or a developer’s laptop.The problem comes when managing a whole lot of containers together.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Everything you need to know about Google I/O 2016 | Will containers kill the virtual machine? +
There are a handful of platforms emerging for managing containers at scale. Docker – the company that is credited with generating much of the market buzz about containers – has its own tool called Swarm. Google – which has said that most of its internal apps run in containers – has open sourced its own container management platform named Kubernetes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google this week made a concerted effort to highlight its growing presence in enterprise at its annual Google I/O developer conference. The company announced new development APIs for its Sheets, Slides and Classroom apps. It also unveiled a major update to its backend-as-a-service platform Firebase, a custom chipset for machine learning, and an API partner ecosystem with Salesforce, SAP and others.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two years after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella cut the cord between his firm's biggest money makers -- Office and Windows -- by introducing mobile productivity apps for Apple's iPhones and iPads, the Redmond, Wash. company remains far behind rival Google in the category, a researcher said today.According to data provided to Computerworld by SurveyMonkey Intelligence, the monthly-active users of Google's mobile productivity apps in April vastly outnumbered those for Microsoft's Office."I was surprised that Google was dominating as much as it is," said Bonnie Yu, a product manager at SurveyMonkey. "I really expected Microsoft to be a better competitor."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google I/O 2016 kicks off in styleImage by Matt KapkoGoogle this week held its annual developer conference right next door to its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., at the massive, storied Shoreline Amphitheatre. More than 6,500 people attended the outdoor keynote address, which felt a bit like an early morning rave, complete with thundering bass, trippy imagery and ambient sound.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marketers can tap virtually limitless volumes of data about customers' online activities, but the offline world isn't nearly as forthcoming. That's where SAP aims to help.The company on Thursday unveiled a new service that offers demographic data in near real time about the people currently inside a store or at a particular venue or event. Called SAP Digital Consumer Insight, the service taps consumers' mobile data to deliver details on where they're coming from, their age groups and gender, and the devices they're using. Marketers can also benchmark one store location against another, compare two potential new locations, or see how well their marketing efforts stack up against the competition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here