Google’s Self driving cars have been doing well. If you’ve ever wanted your own self-driving car, this is your chance. Sebastian Thrun, instructor of the Stanford AI class is opening up a new class that will teach everyone who enrolls how to program a self-driving car in seven weeks. That’s right within 7 weeks, you will learn all the algorithms, and Data structures required to make it possible.

The robotic car class is being taught alongside a CS 101 “intro to programming” course. The lectures start from very basics of programming and you will go all the way to how to make a search engine from scratch in seven weeks. The “Building a Search Engine” class is filled with awesomeness.

Programming a Robotic car is going to be a 7 weeks tutorial as well. You can start registering now to receive a notification when its ready.

This class, taught by one of the foremost experts in AI, will teach you basic methods in Artificial Intelligence, including: probabilistic inference, computer vision, machine learning, and planning, all with a focus on robotics. Extensive programming examples and assignments will apply these methods in the context of building self-driving cars. You will get a chance to visit, via video, the leading research labs in the field, and meet the scientists and engineers who are building self-driving cars at Stanford and Google.
Prerequisites: The instructor will assume solid knowledge of programming, all programming will be in Python. Knowledge of probability and linear algebra will be helpful.

Syllabus:
Week 1: Basics of probability
Car localization with particle filters
Week 2: Gaussians and continuous probability
Tracking other cars with Kalman filters
Week 3: Image Processing and Machine Learning
Finding objects in sensor data
Week 4: Planning and search
Determining where to drive with A* search
Finding optimal routes with dynamic programming
Week 5: Controls
Controlling steering and speeds with PID
Week 6: Putting it all together
Programming a self-driving car
Week 7: Final Exam
Exam testing your knowledge

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The HUD glasses look like Oakley Thumps having a front-facing camera used to gather information and could aid in augmented reality apps. the camera can of course shoot pictures, even in the dark using a small flash. Camera is extremely small yet ranging upto few megapixels.

However, there are differences from a standard heads up display (HUD). This one is only for one eye. It is not transparent nor does it have dual 3D configurations. Among its cool features, the navigation system currently used is a head tilting-to scroll and click. We’ve leant that it is very quick to learn and once the user is adept at navigation, it becomes second nature and almost indistinguishable to outside users.

Not just that, you can control the glasses with voice input and output could also be voice. It is speculated that this device runs Android OS on an older generation hardware ~1GHz ARM A8, 256MB RAM and 8GB of storage. So it also a phone or perhaps can integrate well with phone in your pocket?

We can only speculate what it could become, but it already sounds awesome.

and yes, Motorola already demoed something related to 3d glasses at CES:

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Its a great value add to search, but not everyone is a Google+ user and not everyone likes to have personal search results. Instead, you might want to bring back the Twitter search results. If you’re among those, you’re lucky, coz a Chrome Extension lets you do exactly that.

Sidebar for Google Search modifies your Search results by placing a customizable sidebar on the right. You can choose to display results from Twitter, Wikipedia, Wikitionary, Youtube, and more.

Not only the Twitter search results are accurate, they are nearly realtime. All the top search results are shown. However, they are rarely ordered by relevance. But in most cases, it serves the purpose well.

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Google Fiber networks are now being installed across the country on the shortlisted cities like Kansas and Stanford university. The initial speed tests are out and boy, they are fast.

Throughputs of upto 151.68Mb/s download and 92.79Mb/s upload have been testified so far. The ping delay is as low as 5ms, the order of something that you can get on a wifi too. The ISP is listed as TATA communications, which is a pioneer ISP in India. They do have operations in US, but we are not very sure if Google fiber’s backend is provided by TATA comm.

This is just the testing phase, its free and speeds would increase in the future.

as per Google,

We’ve reached an agreement with Stanford University to build an ultra-high speed broadband network to the university’s Residential Subdivision, a group of approximately 850 faculty- and staff-owned homes on campus. Through this trial, we plan to offer Internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second—more than 100 times faster than what most people have access to today. We plan to start breaking ground in early 2011.

The obvious question now is, if Google can do this, why aren’t network operators banging down the company’s door to get involved and roll this out everywhere?  Fiber to the home is a big initiative, Verizon had been doing good but they still lack way behind. On a side note, fee to purchase and install Google Fiber from the property line in [one’s] home will be $249 for professional installation and $49 for self-installation.

Related: How Optical Fibers work

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Patents with Benefits

Google is spending $12.5 billion to buy Motorola Mobility. But the big prize isn’t Motorola’s lineup of cellphones, computer tablets and cable set-top boxes, It’s Motorola’s more than 17,000 patents — a crucial weapon in an intellectual arms race with Apple, Microsoft and Oracle to gain more control over the increasingly lucrative market for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Google has $39 billion in cash and can easily afford it, the price translates to $40 per share, 63 percent above Motorola’s stock price before the deal was announced.

However, it might be a good short term strategy, long term impacts are yet to be seen.

Should Android OHA worry?

Android partners including HTC, Samsung, SonyEricsson have showed a strong support to Google’s move, at least publicly. Its hard to say it now if they are actually worrying of being a competitor to Google. All partners have heavily invested in android platform, and there is no looking back for them, if Google builds an apple like strong hardware-software tight-coupling, Open handset alliance is going to shatter. But won’t let that happen, they would do anything to keep Android green.

Its going to be hard

And by getting Motorola employees onboard, Google now has 48,000 employees 60% up from 29,000 that it had previously. It would not just be the biggest ut also the largest employee-on-employee acquision in Tech sector, ever.

Early on, investors hate it. Google stock has gotten smacked in the pre-market. It would be harder for Google to convince almost all its investors.

Other Benefits

Buying Motorola also would push Google into phone and computer tablet manufacturing, competing with other device makers who rely on Android. The largest makers of Android devices are all supporting a deal that Google CEO Larry Page said was too tempting to resist.

“With mobility increasingly taking center stage in the computing revolution, the combination with Motorola is an extremely important step in Google’s continuing evolution,” Page told analysts in a conference call Monday.

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Apple has won against the HTC in a lawsuit where ITC has identified that HTC had infringed two of its patents. It was found to have infringed two of 10 Apple patents originally asserted in the case. However, HTC will “vigorously fight these two remaining patents through an appeal before the ITC commissioners who make the final decision,”

However, the point worth noting here is that this brings almost whole of android platform into trouble as Patents appear to be at the core of Android and are likely infringed by all Android devices.

The Patents:

The 2 patents are:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data” (in its complaint, Apple provides examples such as the recognition of “phone numbers, post-office addresses and dates” and the ability to perform “related actions with that data”; one example is that “the system may receive data that includes a phone number, highlight it for a user, and then, in response to a user’s interaction with the highlighted text, offer the user the choice of making a phone call to the number”)
• U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data” (while this sounds like a pure hardware patent, there are various references in it to logical connections, drivers, programs; in its complaint, Apple said that this patent “relates generally to providing programming abstraction layers for real-time processing applications”)

Ground Reality

All of the patents are actually ridiculous. Where Open source encourages an innovative way, these patents are actually granted for ridiculously small and easy things in software engineering. e.g. If you see a phone number, automatic hyperlinking has a patent. Its ridiculous! Come on Apple.

But violating patent is a serious offense, at the end of the day either Google or all hardware OEMs will end up paying royalty to Apple for using their patented technology.

The whole software patent system needs to be rethought to suit modern world. Open Source projects like Linux and Android contribute a lot to world but actually endup being sued over stupid little patents of something that has been done before several times, unknowingly.

What happens Next

In worst-case there would be a import ban against many or even all Android-based HTC products in the U.S. market. Alternatively, HTC might have to remove certain functionality from its products, and that could result in a significant degradation of the quality of those devices.

Since those patents actually don’t relate to HTC’s own extensions of Android but to Android itself, they may affect all of the other makers of Android-based devices. Apple could soon be in a strong position to obtain import bans against dozens of device makers including Samsung, motorola, and all other big players of android.

Apple can grant HTC a license just like Microsoft did and let HTC pay royalty on every android phone they sell, but Apple might claim damages claim and ban imports.

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Plusbar adds couple of new things to Google+ like  audio and video media player. Although the plans are pretty wide, at the moment plusbar offers Amazing Radio, DFH Radio, Grooveshark, BBC News and TWiT livestream. It integrates beautifully into Google plus as if it was a native part of the stream.

We are addicted to Google+ and spend hours on it, this is definitely a nice add-on to accompany the navigation. We love Chrome CSS tricks, check it out (chrome only).

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Google would go step further and bring Social gaming platform to Google+, which plans to be better than Facebook’s approach.

Here is the html source of the Google+ that leads us to no doubt that Social Gaming is just around the corner:

“… have sent you invites and more from Google+ Games”

This actually makes us believe that even Social Gaming is already Live and available to select users who are testing in a closed group before it hits the masses.

Google had acquired few social gaming companies, it all makes sense why. “Google+ Games” could be Google’s take on Apple’s Game Center, a social gaming portal. Of course Apple could be a long term rival, but for the moment, its all about Facebook. Facebook had been popular with its addictive games such as Farmville. Facebook, however, doesn’t have a centralized way to manage high scores or even collaborate users at gaming. If Google actually creates one, it could actually succeed, in hitting both the targets.

Developer API for Google+

Developer APIs are coming, it might be in next few days or may be few. As Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of social for Google, told on eof the reporters:

“I’m a developer guy at the core. It is inconceivable I would build something without a platform. We’re just getting started!”

More functions will be definitely be added to Google+, along with tighter integration with other Google apps. Giving developers access to full API might not be a great idea since most of the stuff is itself in alpha stages. IT makes sense that Google builds a mature base before developers start duplicating features, apps.

If they integrate chrome app store kind of stuff to Google+, it might look a lot nicer than Facebook’s spammy approach. We would start seeing Zynga games, along with popular titles like Angry birds and what not.

Google+ is getting strong positive reviews all over the internet and when we talk about GooglePlus vs Facebook, most actually foresee a better future with Google Plus.

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Disclaimer: Most reviews of Google+ are desperately vague and written by authors who haven’t actually used it. I got to spend nearly 12 hours with it and finally created an opinion of my own, views expressed here are unbiased and to the point.

Note: Checkout official demos of Google+.

What Google Plus is about:

Its a Social network built by taking Facebook as the platform base, and building all new interface and features on top of it. Google Plus integrates almost all major Google services into one place pretty nicely.

What Google Plus is Not:

Its not an instant Facebook killer. Google plus is far from complete on features, but just like facebook, it would gain over time and eventually beat facebook, provided Google doesn’t suck at marketing this time.

Google Plus – Initial impressions

Google has learnt a lot from Buzz mistakes and technical advancements of Google Wave. The combined experience must have been a shocker for the management that actually lead to a new approach to next generation Social network built entirely on HTML5.

Click to see fullsize

On the first look, Google+ looks cleaner, snappier and more intuitive than Facebook. And after having it used for nearly a day, the opinion has grown stronger. Every part of the user interface is faster than Facebook, and yet better on eyes. Searching for people, for instance, is super fast. Think of people search as Google Instant for Social.

Lets go deeper into various interface components of Google Plus Project:

Circles:

All your social contacts happily reside inside Circles. Circles give you a very graphical representation of your contacts grouped into “geometric circles” each belonging to different categories like Family, Friends, Co-workers, etc. Organizing contacts is among the easiest you could find on a web application, thanks to HTML5. Finding & Dragging multiple contacts into circles is fun. It took me couple of minutes to organize all my contacts.

Sparks:

What excites you? With Sparks, Google is trying to capture the market of “topic based following”, the ones that are already popular with Quora or, #hashtags of twitter. You can now follow topics of your interest from around the web with a click of a button. This is not Facebook pages or groups by any sort, these are plain meta tags, and the returned results are site agnostic.

Hangouts:

This is something Skype is already jealous of and Facebook would hate in the future. Live video collaboration for upto 10 people is now actually possible using Hangouts on G+. You chat and have live audio/video stream like never before.

Notifications:

Just like Google got notifications right in Android, they can’t go wrong in Google+. Notifications are clean, interactive and are placed in the upper right corner of the navigation bar.

The notifications are visible across all google sites, and come handy. For Instance when you receive a comment on one of your posts, you can click and bringdown a dialog which actually lets you comment inline without having to navigate away from the page you are currently on. Facebook forces you to goto the page and of course doesn’t notify anywhere other than its own site.

Apart from that, Google+ can send email and sms notifications for almost all sorts of events that you choose to.

Photos:

If there is feature I’ve to chose that I love the most, photos would be it. With the Picasa integrated into Google+, you can’t really go wrong. Photos on Google+ are more like Picasa on steroids, its fast, nifty and intuitive. Unlike Facebook where you only see photos of a limited size and resolution, Google+ takes it to near fullscreen placing the comments nicely along the side bar and a slideshow at the bottom.

Whats more is that you can edit photos and give some easy touches using the inbuilt photo editor, thanks to the Picnik acquisition.

If you like photography, you would love upgrading from Facebook to G+.

The Mobile app

The Android Google+ app is one pof the best apps I’ve seen on android or iPhone. The interface is slick and smooth. Its powerful yet easy. You can quickly jump between the circles, profile, photos, and share new stuff with a click of a button.

You even get to see the buzzword around your place under “near me” sliding tab.
Camera photos are automatically uploaded to a private album which can later be shared on Google+ streams of your choice.

iPhone users are pretty much out of luck till apple approves the Google+ app. Meanwhile, web app should satisfy the tastes.

Verdict: Google plus Vs. Facebook

Google + has done a good job at rethinking Social networks. We need webapps that take full advantage of our modern browsers that are capable of HTML5 and great graphics, animations. Facebook has started to go there but Google+ has already attained it.

Google+ is short on features, at least for now. What I miss on Google+ is Fan Pages for business, websites. Facebook pages are great for attracting millions of fan following. I don’t know if its even on Google’s Todo list or not, but we definitely miss it.

Other than that third party API, and applications are not yet available. To stay in market Google would have to push them soon enough. With release of API, we would start seeing 3rd party apps building Google+clients & start integrating other webapps, native apps with Google+. Applications is other part of the story, Facebook users love playing games and other time killing applications. May be google integrates it with Chrome Webstore or something else to make apps possible, but it would be a must.

We don’t believe Google+ would be a Facebook killer instantly, even though its better. The point to consider is that Facebook is 700million users strong, it would take a year or move even if all of them start thinking about it.

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Pronounced “Google Plus,” the product is officially written as Google+ — making placing any punctuation after the name fairly awkward. But what looks more natural is the user interface. Facebook has  good UI but Google+feels even better, at least initial mockups. With Google+, the search giant plans to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software.

“It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president of Google’s social products.

Circles: share what matters

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is built from the ground up around the concept of sharing material with groups of people, called “Circles.” Here’s an example of what sucks with the current generation of social networking:

• We only want to connect with certain people at certain times, but online we hear from everyone all the time.
• It’s scary. People fear privacy before sharing any kind of info.
• It’s insensitive.

From close family to foodies, Google realized that people already use real-life circles to express themselves, and to share with precisely the right folks.

+Sparks: strike up a conversation

Start talking about things you love based on topics. Oh this would be like Quora integrated into something truly social. Once you get started with things that intersts you: Cars, biking, motor sports, spaceships, photography, or tech, great content can lead to great conversations. ITs true that today on facebook it’s still too hard to find and share the things we care about—not without lots of work, and lots of noise. Google created Sparks!

+Hangouts

Here’s what Skype and facebook would hate about Google+, group video chats. With Google+ you can make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous. Casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you’re free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face in large groups

+Mobile

The same experience of the web brought to mobiles plus more. +Location – Checkins and more +Instant Upload – Photos and Videos Instant Upload automatically uploads photos to private album to your account, they can be shared at a later point. App is available on Android market, soon on iOS App Store.

+Huddle

Google+ includes Huddle, a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know what’s going on, all in real-time.

Google+ would start sending out invites after you show interest/ register for it.

Update: Indepth Revew: Google Plus vs Facebook handson

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Nexus 3 aka Nexus 4G

The Google Nexus Prime would ditch physical menu keys and would feature a super high 720p -resolution display,  “Super AMOLED HD” display designed and manufactured by Samsung. The display branding confirms that Samsung would be the one that would actually be building Nexus Prime with a TI OMAP 4460 dual-core processor 1.2Ghz or 1.4Ghz or even 1.5Ghz.

Sources claim that Google could be working with multiple carriers and multiple OEMs on their own “exclusive” Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) halo devices, and that they may all launch around the same time.

Nexus Prime Specs

Other than what’s mentioned, it would sport 4G LTE radio, 1GB of RAM, 1080p HD video capture and playback, a 2-megapixel front-camera, and a 5-megapixel rear camera. The rear camera may seem to be similar on specs but it would actually be a high-end, high performance 5MP camera  that would deliver class-leading image quality and really nice ISO sensitivity to reproduce excellent results even in low light.

The processor may not be a Tegra 3, that would launch later in Q1, 2012 with Samsung Galaxy SIII and other phones.

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The next Nexus device, would be called the Nexus 4G, featuring next gen dual-core 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz CPU (OMAP 4460 or a, ultra low-power 28nm Krait-based Snapdragon). The best part would be its high resolution display 720p HD “monster-sized” screen.

What’s more would be that it would be ditching all physical features in order to align with Honeycomb flavored Ice Cream Sandwich Android 4.0 operating system.

Ice Cream sandwich would bring:

• Unified for Smartphones + Tablets goodbye fragmentation
• New innovative features like face-tracking and camera focus shifting based on voice recognition.
• Hardware accelerated holographic UI from honeycomb.
• Face recognition, Virtual camera.
• Improved multitasking.

Other than that it would sport 4G LTE radio, 1GB of RAM, 1080p HD video capture and playback, a 1-megapixel front-camera, and a 5-megapixel rear camera. The rear camera may seem to be similar on specs but it would actually be a high-end, high performance 5MP camera  that would deliver class-leading image quality and really nice ISO sensitivity to reproduce excellent results even in low light.

Nexus 4G would be thin and light, and would be available around Thanksgiving with AT&T & sprint.

The awesome display resolution, thin and light would make it adorable gadget in November. However, Samsung Galaxy SIII Tegra 3, launching in Q1 2012, would beat the phone in every sense.

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Here are the new things announced:

1. Voice Search for desktop: Allt eh complex queries can now be spoken at google.com
2. Google Goggles or Search by Image on Chrome (native), Firefox (through extension). Just drag and drop any image and Google would tell you what place it is, who the person is, what the object is about.
3. Instant Image Search: Type int eh search box and image results change as-you-type.
4. Instant Search in all major languages all around the world.
5. Instant Pages: Going beyond instant search results, Google Chrome now caches first few results (web pages) so that when you click on them, the page loads without any delay.

Video Demos:

Voice Search on Desktop:

Search by Image:

Google Search with Instant Pages:

Google Search features in images:

How to get Google Image search Instant, Google Googles, Voice search on desktop, Instant Pages

All the features would be launched over this week, worldwide. However, you can preview Page isntant by getting Google Chrome dev release and enabling it in “about:flags”. Standby, we would find a hack to get it sooner than your country allows.

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Eric highlighted 8 main points while talking about the power and dominance of the big brands and how they are changing the way people live.
Among the facts he shared with the public:

1. There are only 4 major players in the industry that are impacting the life’s of the consumers. He calls them Gang of Four: Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook. Ahem, no Microsoft.
2. Google has managed to get a deal renewed with Apple to be the default search engine & Maps on all apple devices: Mac OS Safari, iPHone, other iOS devices. Also it would be the default location data provider on iOS.
3. Google would get social data from number of sources and would not intend to buy any of the existing social networking sites.
4. Eric would love to work with Google till his deathand even after that if thats possible.
5. Google had long invented technology for public facial recognition but privacy issues are holding it back
6. His biggest failure was to fail at Social. If there’s only one thing he could change for the good, Social would be it.
7. Google doesn’t misuse user information, it all comes back to user as better search results. User has the full control over the information they are sharing with google.
8. If you care about security use Mac over a PC and user Chrome browser.

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How Google Wallet works:

Google, along with Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint, have built a new payment system called Google Wallet. Basically, Google Wallet is an app that will make your phone your wallet. You’ll be able to tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC).

Right now its just coming to NFC enabled Android phones. With your single android phone, you’ll be able to store your credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards, and a simple tap you can auto redeem offers and earn loyalty points and pay the due amounts. Google has vision that in the future it can also act as your ticket, boarding pass, and what not.

Google Wallet will support both Citi MasterCard and a Google Prepaid Card. Using Google Wallet you can pay wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted.
Google is building an open commerce ecosystem, with APIs that will enable integration with numerous partners.

Watch Google Wallet Experience that excites so many merchants:

More at: www.google.com/wallet.

Google is field testing Google Wallet, would be available soon.

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iRobot has developed a new series of autonomous Robots called Ava that are equipped with array of sensors like 3D cameras (like Kinect), scanning laser, ultrasonic transducers, driven by omnidirectional wheels. They are powered by base hosts batteries, motors, as well as electronics and supports a telescopic mast that carries a pod containing touch ribbons, speakers, and a microphone.

iRobot Ava is based on Intel Core-based computers with a tilt capable head on top of with is basically an Android tablet. Ava is capable of roaming around by studying the ambiance, even with people walking around, it can save itself from actually hitting anyone. The onboard computer does all the computations to let it walk without trouble.

Google and iRobot have worked together and created APIs that allow Android developers to write apps — from telepresence to roaming testimonials — that control Ava wirelessly from the docked tablet. This would bring new projects which combine the power of robotics and Android devices. Its hard to talk about prices and timelines at the moment, but they are about to hit the market and developers sometime later this year. Stay tuned.

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Update: Keynote Video now available (scroll to bottom)

Here’s a list of things that were announced:

1. Movie Rentals:

You can now rent and watch movies on any android device or via browser as low as $1.99. The rental is valid for 30 days and 24hours after starting the video first time. You can even download the whole movie, and watch it offline on your tablet or phone.

2. Android Honeycomb 3.1

• Full support for Google TV along with Tablets. Same UI, same apps. New Google TV PArtners: Samsung, Vizio in addition to Logitech, Sony.
• Resizable widgets on homescreen, plus other ui improvements.
• USB host mode that will let you connect any USB device with your Honeycomb device beit be  importing photos from your digital camera, or an Xbox 360 controller.
• Google’s new Movies app that will let you rent thousands of movies from the Android market, and it will be available on Google TVs as well
• New Apps: Books
• New graphical transitions, animations, more GPU powered (hardware accelerated), faster, better UI.
• Data storage encryption.

3. Google Music

• A free beta service for you to upload 20,000 songs to google’s cloud, free of cost
• Playback anywhere: Browser, any android phone, Tablet.
• Cached locally on phone/tablet.
• iTunes, Media player compatible desktop clients that syncs your playlists.
• “No wires, no painful syncing — it’s all just available instantly.”

4. Android IceCream Sandwich (Android 4.0)

• Unified for Smartphones + Tablets goodbye fragmentation
• New innovative features like face-tracking and camera focus shifting based on voice recognition.

5.  Guaranteed updates:

Manufacturers and carriers committed to making sure their Android devices receive the very latest updates. All four major US carriers (and Vodafone) as well as HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola are on board, and all will guarantee you timely upgrades to the latest version of Android for eighteen months after release, provided the hardware’s capable.

6.  Android Hardware accessory support:

• Use any external hardware/accessory with your Android device e.g. workout machine or a massage chair.
• Full sport for DIY Arduino based hardware projects using ADK.
• Several hardware accessories to be available soon.

7.  Android@Home

• Google wants to think of “every appliance in your home” as a potential accessory for your phone. this brings endless possibilities. You cna do nasty stuff like turning on and off based on calendar events, applications talking to washing machines, games automatically adjusting for mood lighting, and basically little green dudes taking care of all the menial duties in your house.
• One amazing demo was a concept, Android-powered device hub called Tungsten. Using NFC tag embedded into CD cases the device was able to detect the CD and add it to your library. Another touch and it started automatically.

Google has really taken a step further in Openness of Android, the excitement is sky high. Keynote video after a break!

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Google has, quietly, made the necessary upgrades to its webpages to support the new SPDY protocol reducing the page load time of Chrome for pages on its own servers by a stunning 50%. In effect, Google sites should load much faster in Chrome than in any other web browser.

SPDY incorporates features like multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression. To demonstrate the productivity. To be more precise, it’s 64% faster made possible as SPDY allows many concurrent HTTP requests to run across one TCP session and to make SLL the standard transport protocol.

Most of the shortcomings of HTTP were identified back in 1995, but little has been done to improve speed. As a result of that, both TCP and HTTP have evolved into a bottleneck of data downloads. HTTP is especially criticized for latency issues since HTTP can only fetch one resource at a time and servers cannot communicate with a client without a client request – and even then it can only support six connections at a time in most browsers. Apart from that, HTTP also uses uncompressed and redundant request and response headers.

SPDY Speed Improvements in Chrome
SPDY supports unlimited connection streams, with provision to proritize certain SPDY requests over others and even allows blocking overloaded channels. It also supports header compression and allows the server to communicate with a client without a client request.

SPDY is not much different, it still uses HTTP methods, headers and “other semantics.”, still using TCP.  The difference is in connection management and data transfer formats.

How to Benchmark SPDY Improvements

You can always see speed improvements by calculating pageloading times. But there’s another way to measure it navigate to chrome://net-internals in a Chrome and Click on “View live SPDY session” to see all SPDY connections.

Google would open source the complete implementation of SPDY, as soon as all looks baked.

In case you wish to test SPDY out, Download any Chrome browser (stable, beta, developer, canary, nightly build) and point it to any Google site, it should be significantly faster.

More on SPDY [official whitepaper]

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Ruthless Software Patents are Evil

The tech world has recently seen remarkable number of instances driven by patent litigations, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to decelerate innovation. The problem with it is that most Patents are held with people/companies that have never actually materialized any of it. The patent system  should instead concentrate on rewarding patents to those innovators who create the most useful applications from ideas, for the good of the society.

Google is taking a step here to lighten things up, both in the best interest of the company’s products and for its partners. Google has bought all of Nortel‘s remaining patents and applications for $900 Million for a total of 6,000 patents covering wired, wireless and digital communications technologies. Google would get patents for wireless, 4G, data networking, optical, voice, semiconductors and other telecom areas.

What would Google Do with Telecom patents? Google would use these patents to innovate in its own products like Android, Chrome and let anyone in the Open Source community play with all of it. In other words, these patents will now be owned by everyone, thereby not restricting in sort of innovation, which could have been stuck for years.

Google adds:

Today, Nortel selected our bid as the “stalking-horse bid,” which is the starting point against which others will bid prior to the auction. If successful, we hope this portfolio will not only create a disincentive for others to sue Google, but also help us, our partners and the open source community—which is integrally involved in projects like Android and Chrome—continue to innovate. In the absence of meaningful reform, we believe it’s the best long-term solution for Google, our users and our partners.

O yeah! Openness, the way to go. But what would Google do with the non-related Telecom patents? Build another Gigabit fibre ISP? We would have to wait for that.

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You can now +1 web links and your friends will be able to see your recommendations. This is very much like the Facebook LIKE button, but could be even better as it has much wider reach.

The beauty of +1’s is their relevance—you get the right recommendations (because they come from people who matter to you), at the right time (when you are actually looking for information about that topic) and in the right format (your search results).

Checkout the Video:

How to Get/Enable Google +1 in Search

Google Search will now incorporate recommendations from all sites you’re connected to, you can edit those under “Social Circle and Content” section of the Google Dashboard.

To kick start, create a Google profile or upgrade it. You can use your profile to see all of your +1’s in one place, and delete those you no longer want to recommend.

Google PlusOne +1 is rolled out to US then other countries, if you cant wait goto experimental search site and then visit google.com/ncr . Initially, +1’s will appear alongside search results and ads, but in the weeks ahead they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites across the web).

Enjoy the new Social search experience as Social recommendations start appearing over time.

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James Gosling, previously an employee of Sun Microsystems, had left Oracle as he thought staying with the company wasn’t good for him or the industry.

Gosling announced his new job at Google “I don’t know what I’ll be working on. I expect it’ll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon,” he said.

Oracle’s ways evidently didn’t agree with Gosling. He called Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison “Larry, Prince of Darkness.” And, he said, “During the integration meetings between Sun and Oracle, where we were being grilled about the patent situation between Sun and Google, we could see the Oracle lawyer’s eyes sparkle.” It was definitely against the ethical limits of Sun or Gosling. Suing is the last part Sun thought about.

Google had been sued by Oracle over Java patents in Android, Gosling being a true Open source professional punched Larry Ellison’s face by joining Google. Gosling’s choice was obvious since it has the same research-intensive practices that built Sun, but only more successful. And unlike Sun, Google has managed to become famous for endorsing ‘Open’.

Over the last year, he was all on his own and now after a year he claims that “One of the toughest things about life is making choices. I had a hard time saying ‘no’ to a bunch of other excellent possibilities.”

Outside of Oracle, Google is the no. 1 contributor for Java and Open source standards. With Gosling on the board, the internet giant is bound to make things better.

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BitCoin was started in 2009, and it was until very recently that it started getting more adoption worldwide. Unlike most currencies, bitcoin does not rely on trusting any central issuer. Bitcoin uses a distributed database spread across nodes of a peer-to-peer network to journal transactions, and uses cryptography in order to provide basic security functions, such as ensuring that bitcoins can only be spent by the person who owns them, and never more than once.

BitCoin is purely P2p , that means that there is no central authority to issue new money or keep track of transactions. Instead, these tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network. So you get the same advantages that you see in BiTorrents, yet better:

• Bitcoins can be sent easily through the Internet, without having to trust middlemen.
• It can’t be stopped.
• Transactions are designed to be computationally prohibitive to reverse.
• Be safe from instability caused by fractional reserve banking and central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by banks. No extra currency conversion fees.

Bitcoin relies on the transfer of amounts between public accounts using public key cryptography. All transactions are public and stored in a distributed database. To prevent double-spending, the network implements a distributed time server, using the idea of chained proofs of work. The whole history of transactions must be stored inside the database.

Here are few videos that can get you started:

Very Recently, A Google developer release a Java-based open source implementation of BitCoin and called it BitCoinJ.

BitcoinJ implements the native Bitcoin P2P protocol, which allows it to maintain a wallet and send and receive transactions without needing a local copy of the official implementation.

BitcoinJ implements the “simplified payment verification” mode so it stores what it needs in order to verify transactions with the aid of an untrusted peer node.

Andresen said Google is more likely to adopt Bitcoin if the company has an in-house implementation of the client software like BitcoinJ and that’s why we see a Big future in BitCoin And a second implementation of Bitcoin is very good for network diversity of apps, platforms and robustness.

Download C++ based BitCoin application:

Download for Windows (5.8MB)
Download  for Linux (32-bit & 64-bit) (9.8MB)
Download for Mac OS X (10.5+ Intel) (7.7MB)

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You can often get caught up with offline-online documents, ending up wasting time trying to get them right. You wish there was a GDrive like solution that syncs all your Windows, Mac computers.

Here are some quick solutions for you to keep all your docs in sync.

1. Google Cloud Connect
This is Google’s Official Microsoft Office plugin that lets you save your Office documents to your Google Docs account with a click. The switching is ultra slick — Compose a new document inside Word, Excel or PowerPoint and hit the Sync button to upload it to your Google account. However, the reverse is not possible.
Download

2. Insync

Insync provides offline access to your Google Docs files and can also sync your local document folder with the cloud. When you add or edit a file on the local desktop, it will automatically sync to Google Docs and vice-versa.

The desktop client for Insync is available for both Mac and Windows. Google Apps users get access to Insync right away while there’s a waiting list for Gmail users that you have to signup for.

Download

3. Gladient Starter

Gladient lets you mount your Google Docs account as a virtual drive and use as a local drive.

You can then double-click any document in this virtual folder to edit with the corresponding Office program. Any files saved to this folder are uploaded to Google Docs. You can also drag-n-drop files to this virtual folder and they’ll get uploaded in a batch to your online Google Docs account. Go ahead and play with it.

Download

4. Syncplicity

Syncplicity allows a Google Docs user the ability to access, manage, sync, share, and backup their files online. The desktop app integrates with Windows Explorer for file management purposes. (The Mac app is still in works.)
It supports fully automatic synchronization with not just Google Docs – but also with its own website as well as other computers running the Syncplicity software. Incredibly, your files are not only available on other machines, they’re backed up in multiple places online too. Apart from the backup, it can also “restore” old versions of the file using their Web application in case of accidental deletes or overwrites.

Syncplicity is available in various licenses: A free personal edition provides 2 GB of online storage for up to 2 computers while a $15/month personal edition offers 50 GB of storage for up to 5 computers. Other Business plans are also available

Download

5. Memeo Connect for Google Apps
Memeo Connect works with both Mac and PC and lets you view files on both your desktop and within Google Docs. It automatically downloads Google Docs for offline use. Local files can then be moved to the appropriate Google Docs folder via drag-and-drop. The only bad side is absence of Auto-sync — which means you can’t monitor a local folder or folders for new files or changes and then have those documents seamlessly synced to Google’s online service. However, the update is expected some time soon.

The app targets Google Apps Premier edition users, a business-level version of the service which also offers calendaring, groups, Web site creation tools, and video sharing to corporate users for $50 per user per year. Memeo Connect itself costs an additional $9/year.

Download

6. Offisync

Offisync, like Cloud connect, is a MS Office plugin. When installed, the plugin adds an additional menu to Office’s software (Office 2003 or newer) that allow you to open, save, search, collaborate, and email your Google Docs files.
The software works on Windows. The Enterprise version provides the same functionality to business users by providing integration with Google’s website building software, Google Sites, a service which provides a simplified alternative to SharePoint. The personal one is simple and works at zero cost.

Download

Related: [Bulk] Upload Folders to Google Docs [GDrive]

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Using the Honeycomb music player alongside the newer Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread (you can use CyanogenMod 7 Nightlies  or ANY other ROM, including official).

How to Enable Cloud Music Sync on Android Phone

1. Remove the stock Music app from your android phone/device. (Use adb command: “adb remove com.google.android.music”)
2. Replace the app with one from Honeycomb: Honeycomb music app apk. Update: Download New Android Music Player
3. Install the app accepting all permissions.
4. Go to settings > Account and Sync > Music settings are available. Music Sync starts automatically. Make sure you have enough space in SD card.
5. Go to the “Jumper Test” that comes along with the Music app. Start the peer under the Controls tab, run a test under the Logs tab, it should show you music files synced.
6. Go back to the music app >  settings and enable “Stream Music” and all your music would start to show up!
7. Enjoy the music anywhere, anytime.

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