It’s an exciting time when two worlds collide, especially for iOS users that have an affection for Google services. The head honchos in Mountain View took to the stage at Moscone West today and announced two programs were going to be made available in the App Store by the end of day: Chrome and Drive. The latter pushed out first, so we decided to give the free app a closer look. Head below for some screenshots and our impressions of the service.
Today’s Google I/O keynote was, as expected, all about the Chrome. Easily one of the biggest among the company’s laundry list of announcements surrounding the browser-turned-operating-system has to be its arrival on iOS, bringing the functionality that an ever-growing number of users have come to know and love to the iPhone and iPad. The list includes, perhaps most notably, its cross-device syncing, ensuring that you can pick up where you left off on the desktop version of the program, taking your pages and tabs with you on the go. So, is Google’s fancy mobile browser enough to get us off mobile Safari altogether? Check out some impressions of the iPhone version of the app after the break.
The last quarter has been about as rough as they come for RIM, and it’s now detailed just how things stacked up in terms of hard numbers. For the first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, the company brought in $2.8 billion in revenue, down a full 33 percent from the prior quarter, while it reported a net loss of $518 million — much worse than analysts were expecting. What’s more, it’s also announced that it’s cutting an additional 5,000 jobs as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts, and that the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones now won’t launch until sometime in the first quarter of the 2013 calendar year (that includes a QWERTY model launched in “close proximity” to the touchscreen-only device). As for why, RIM only went as far as to say that the integration of some key BlackBerry 10 features and the “associated large volume of code” has “proven to be more time consuming than anticipated.” For his part, though, CEO Thorsten Heins says he remains “confident that the first BlackBerry 10 smartphones will provide a ground-breaking next generation smartphone user experience,” and that he’s “encouraged by the traction that the BlackBerry 10 platform is gaining with application developers and content partners.” He further notes that the response to BB10 from key carrier partners has “been very positive.”
At day two of I/O, Google repeated pretty much the same keynote, but it also finally announced Chrome for iOS. After a tortuous wait, it’s landed in the App Store this afternoon, and I spent some time using it. And it’s not quite what you’d hope.
I love this movie theater layout. It would be my favorite theater ever. Wait, no. My favorite movie theater would have seats that would open into a pit full of hungry Great White sharks in the case people talked out loud, texted or ate making annoying noises.
Ooooooh yes, indeed.
And then show footage of the sharks eating the people at the end of the movie. A friendly reminder!
Anyway, check out the complete cartoon at the [Oatmeal]
Researchers have invented a mind-reading system that, for the first time in history, allows any person to type words and phrases letter by letter, just by thinking. It all occurs in real time, without moving a single muscle or uttering a single word.This is an amazing invention. Not only it will help anyone with serious motor disabilities, but it could potentially affect all of us in an amazing way.According to the researchers—Bettina Sorger, Joel Reithler, Brigitte Dahmen, Rainer Goebel at Universiteit Maastrichts Faculty of Psychology & Neuroscience Department of Neurocognition—this is the first system that translates thoughts into letters in real time, allowing “back-and-forth communication within a single scanning session.”Sorger and her colleagues—who were inspired by the work of Adrian Owen—claim that this new system requires very little effort to setup, becoming “immediately operational.” They also say that it has a high application potential “both in terms of diagnostics and establishing short-term communication with nonresponsive and severely motor-impaired patients.”
via Scientists Invent Mind-Reading System That Lets You Type With Your Brain.
Facebook’s app for iPhone and iPad tend to get a bad rap, but two anonymous engineers close to the source say that a completely rebuilt version is on the way with a heavy emphasis on speed. The current Facebook app for iOS is written with a lot of HTML5, but the updated one will be made with Objective-C and be released for iPhone later this summer. There’s no mention of a timeline for iPad, but hopefully we’ll see it at the same time.
A few weeks ago, we compared the feature sets of iOS 6 and Android Ice Cream Sandwich to see how they stacked up. But then Google and Microsoft went and dropped all sorts of new features in their new Android Jelly Bean and Windows Phone 8 operating systems. That means it’s time to reexamine the relative merits of each once again. Let the battle begin!
via Android Jelly Bean vs. iOS 6 vs. Windows Phone 8: The Ultimate Mobile Comparison.
This may seem like something out of a science fiction movie: researchers have designed microparticles that can be injected directly into the bloodstream to quickly oxygenate your body, even if you cant breathe anymore. Its one of the best medical breakthroughs in recent years, and one that could save millions of lives every year.The invention, developed by a team at Boston Childrens Hospital, will allow medical teams to keep patients alive and well for 15 to 30 minutes despite major respiratory failure. This is enough time for doctors and emergency personnel to act without risking a heart attack or permanent brain injuries in the patient.
via Scientists Invent Particles That Will Let You Live Without Breathing.
There was a time, not so long ago, when gearing up for school meant a new pencil case or perhaps a snappy new Trapper Keeper. Today, school kids have access to technology their slide rule-wielding predecessors couldnt have possibly dreamed of. Welcome to Tech in Teaching, a recurring series inspired by the HP Pavilion dm4 BeatsTM Edition. Over the next few months Ill be interviewing public school teachers about how technological developments have affected the education process over the years.A few days ago, I spoke with Joe McDonough, a 40-year teaching vet. Joe spent the majority of his tenure teaching math to high schoolers in suburban Long Island and has pretty much seen it all, from ditto machines to room-sized mainframe computers.
via Tech in Teaching: How Technology in the 70s Transformed America’s Classrooms.
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