Google Maps to Unveil Brand New Interface, Report Says [PICS]

Google is set to debut a new interface for its Maps app, according to a report.

Google Operating System, a blog that provides unofficial news about the search giant, said the update will get rid of Maps' current sidebar, and will display location information in pop-ups that appear on top of a full-screen map. The new design places greater emphasis on the map itself, rather on navigational tools such as the direction arrows and zoom functions.

Another new feature of the revamped app will reportedly let users filter local search results to venues that are recommended by top reviews or people in their Google+ circles.

The blog also includes alleged images of Maps' new interface, which appears more immersive, and suited to touchscreen mobile devices. Check them out, below.

While Google Operating System did not say when users will see the overhauled interface, the blog hinted that it could debut at Google I/O, the company's annual developers' conference, next week.

Last October, Google added some visual improvements to Maps by introducing terrain and color gradations to illustrate vegetation.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

What do you think of Google Maps' reported redesign? Tell us in the comments, below. 

Source : mashable

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EA to Develop New Star Wars Games with Frostbite 3 Engine

Right after Electronic Arts announced The Sims 4 for 2014, the company said it had entered into an agreement with The Walt Disney Company to produce new games based on the Star Wars universe. The company said that along with BioWare -- which is already developing for the franchise -- Battlefield series developer DICE and Dead Space series developer Visceral will create new titles as part of the agreement.

According to EA, the new wave will focus on the core gaming market and span multiple platforms including consoles, PCs, tablets, mobile and more. They will also be entirely original despite the movie-based subject matter, and use the Frostbite 3 development engine, guaranteeing "incredible graphic fidelity, environments and characters."

"Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe," said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. "Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay."

Disney's Lucasfilm arm also said via the Star Wars website on Monday that while EA will develop titles for the core gaming audience, Disney Interactive will focus on casual audiences for mobile, social, tablet, and online gaming platforms.

"This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come," said John Pleasants, co-president of Disney Interactive. "Collaborating with one of the world's premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to fans around the world."

News of new Star Wars titles from EA and Disney Interactive arrives after Disney decided to cease developing Star Wars games via LucasArts and focus on licensing deals instead.

"After evaluating our position in the games market, we've decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company's risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games," Disney said. "As a result of this change, we've had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles."

We expect to see and hear additional information about the upcoming games next month during E3 2013. Lucasfilm promised that more information, including titles in development, will be announced in the coming months, so stay tuned.

Source: tomshardware.com

 

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New iPhone 5S, 6 production hints for Summer 2013

With all of the excitement surrounding the Samsung Galaxy S4 launch this week across the US, some may have forgotten that Apple will inevitably be releasing a successor to the iPhone 5 later on in the year. The elusive iPhone ’5S’ or ’6′ has been very quiet on the rumor mill as of late, but we do have some new whispers to share with you regarding possible display production partners that Apple will be sending into action soon.

The idea of flexible display technology to be used on future Samsung phones is getting consumers very excited, but it looks like Apple are not ready for anything quite as adventurous for their next iPhone just yet. Instead, the company are expected to be using the same display screen for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6, and a new report from Japan claims that Sharp will be one of the companies that Apple has asked to build displays for them.

Sharp is also the same company that are rumored to be making display screen technology for the elusive Apple HD TV, another product that seems to have completely disappeared off the rumor mill after strong rumors in 2011.

Japanese newspaper Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun has provided the information, adding that Sharp will also be assisted in display duties by LG and the Japan Display group, which comprises of Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba and the INCJ. Nikkan are claiming that Apple has already sent off their orders with the above companies, ahead of mass production on displays for the next iPhone that Apple want to begin in June.

If Apple are planning to keep the same display for the next iPhone, then obviously consumers will want to see significant upgrades elsewhere for them to even consider upgrading from the iPhone 5.

Rumors have suggested that potential upgrades could involve the camera, the addition of a fingerprint sensor and of course support for iOS 7, which is expected to be unveiled at WWDC 2013 in June.

With this in mind, don’t be surprised if we do not see a new iPhone at Apple’s annual event next month. iOS 7 could be the best thing we’ll see, with a separate new iPhone event coming in September as we’ve seen in previous years.

Assuming that the rumors on an untouched display are true, what do you need to see from a new iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 to consider upgrading?

Source:  product-reviews.net

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Google Maps Said To Be Getting A Facelift That Could Appear At Google I/O

Google’s bound to pull back the curtain on some goodies at its annual I/O conference next week (though it’s being characteristically quiet about the whole thing), but could a redesigned version of Google Maps be one of them? That’s what the folks at the (completely unofficial) Google Operating System blog hint at — they’ve come into possession of a pair of screenshots that supposedly depict Google’s new approach to mapping, and if true they point to some serious modifications.

If true, then Google is ditching he traditional sidebar altogether. Instead, the company may be putting greater emphasis on the map itself and shifting pertinent information — think location data, photos, and Zagat reviews — to a series of cards that hover in the top left corner of the screen.

Oh, and the yellow streets are gone too. I’m just as bummed as you are.

As always, I’d recommend firmly grasping a grain of salt as you pore over the images, but they the visual advances seen in them seem just measured enough to give them some credence. The images depict a version of Google Maps that falls in line with some of the other design choices the folks at Mountain View have been running with lately.

Google’s been pushing those cards quite a bit lately — Google Now was the first service to run with the card metaphor, and the search giant recently revamped its Google Play Store Android app to put individual app and song listings into cards as well. We haven’t really seen those cards invade the desktop yet (unless you count those right-aligned boxes that Google’s Knowledge Graph results live in), but persistent rumors and leaks point to a desktop web version of Google Now that could go live any day now. Hell, even Google Glass uses what the company refers to as timeline cards to encapsulate and display information from Glass apps. All that said, it would hardly be a shock to see Google turning to Maps as the next service to get a card-centric facelift.

And hey, it’s not like Google has been all that great at keeping its secrets behind closed doors lately. Who could forget the completely unexpected Chromebook Pixel reveal that had journos and pundits scratching their heads back in February, not to mention the early Google Play Store redesign leak and the prematurely released video that touted Google Now for iOS that appeared just weeks later. This latest batch of screenshots may leave you with more questions than answers, but I suspect that all will be revealed before long.

 

Source: techcrunch.com

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The Pirate Bay Moves to the Caribbean

The Pirate Bay has a new top level domain (TLD) again: thepiratebay.sx, registered in the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten.

While this latest move will instill various puns related to the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the search for a safe TLD is likely not very fun for the Pirate Bay.

According to TorrentFreak, the move comes after the Swedish authorities, acting on behalf of the entertainment industry, have filed a motion at the District Court of Stockholm, demanding the seizure of thepiratebay.se, piratebay.se and thepiratebay.is domains.

The last one, registered in Iceland, was the site's latest "safe" haven, but it lasted less than a week.

The world's largest BitTorrent tracker took a huge number of blows in its bumpy history, with all of its founders being tried and convicted for piracy in 2010. Lately, the Swedish authorities are going after its domains, but all is not lost for The Pirate Bay, as not all domain registries are bound by the same laws and regulations.

Case in point: TorrentFreak now reports Iceland's domain registry, ISNIC, does not intend to take away Pirate Bay's domain, even if they receive a Swedish court order.

“ISNIC will legally fight attempts to use the domain name registry system to police/censor the net. We believe that to be ineffective, wrong and dangerous to the stability of the DNS as a whole," said ISNIC’s Marius Olafsson.

In any case, The Pirate Bay can currently be found at both the thepiratebay.sx and thepiratebay.is domains, as well as the Swedish thepiratebay.se. Even if one of those domains disappears, we're certain the site's users will quickly find their way to the next one. 

Source : mashable

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LinkedIn Lets You Illustrate Your Talents With Pics, Video

LinkedIn added the ability to showcase users' talents in a whole new way Wednesday: pictures and video. Now LinkedIn users can add visual content to their profile pages, giving more depth to the written content already displayed on the site.

For instance, a photographer might choose to include several of her best photos, or a copywriter might upload a video of that ad he wrote for last year’s Super Bowl. Architects can upload the blueprints for a building they designed, and musicians can upload videos of past performances.

Visual content can be added to your summary, work experience and education sections on the site, and can come from your computer’s hard drive or from the web.

On the flip side of the equation, people who are browsing profiles on the site can now like or comment on media uploaded to others' profiles. A sharing option — for sharing content you find interesting with others — is also in the works.

New media-rich profiles are available now for LinkedIn members in English-speaking countries.

To add media to your own profile on LinkedIn click the “Edit” button on your profile page and follow the prompts in the summary, education and experience sections.

What sorts of content will you be adding to your LinkedIn Profile? 

Source : mashable

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Facebook Earnings Preview: What to Expect

It has been nearly a year since Facebook became a public company. In that time, the stock has crashed and burned and staged a significant comeback — and that was just in the first six months.

After falling to as low as $17.55 a share in early September, the stock has rebounded in fits and starts thanks to a combination of factors including CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pledge not to sell any shares for at least a year and the expiration of its stock lockup periods. But more than anything else, Facebook's stock has benefited from showing continued growth on mobile in the September and December quarter earnings reports.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

All eyes will once again be on mobile revenue when the company releases its March quarter earnings report on Wednesday.

"We believe investors remain heavily focused on this metric," said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne Agee, in a note to investors this week. Bhatia estimates that Facebook will report mobile revenue of $360 million for the quarter, which would represent more than a quarter of total ad revenue, but he notes that anything less than $380 million will likely "disappoint" Wall Street. By comparison, Facebook generated $305 million in mobile ad revenue in the December quarter, or 23% of total ad revenue.

Bhatia also estimates that the number of Facebook users who access the access the social network from a mobile device will tick up slightly to 65% in the March quarter from 64% the quarter before.

Revenue Growth

Facebook's overall revenue is expected to grow as well. The consensus estimate according to analysts polled by Thomson Reuters is that Facebook will report revenue of $1.44 billion for the quarter, up from $1.058 billion during the same quarter last year, right before it went public. Much of that, according to Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Weiser, will come from ad revenue growth driven by international expansion, the Facebook ad exchange and an increase in Sponsored Posts.

"Facebook has established extensions to existing ad products (allowing FBX ads to run on the desktop News Feed and in association with Graph search queries), launched better targeting capabilities (such as the recent launches of lookalike audiences and partner categories launched) and are likely to launch new ad products, such as video ads, as well," Weiser wrote in an investor note this week.

Progress With New Products

During the March quarter, Facebook made several other big announcements, including launching Graph Search and redesigning the News Feed and introducing. Each of these features has the potential to provide new and better ways to serve ads and boost the company's revenue. But not yet. Both Graph Search and the new News Feed have only been rolled out to a tiny fraction of users.

Facebook Home, another new product that the company rolled out in early April, received plenty of buzz, but has been slow to take off. It has been downloaded fewer than 1 million times in the Android App Store — which represents less than 1% of Facebook's total user base — and it has received lousy reviews in the store so far. Facebook also has yet to spell out exactly how it will monetize Home.

The earnings report will be released shortly after the market closes Wednesday at 4pm ET and the earnings call will take place at 5pm ET.

Source : mashable

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Could Android fail?

When we think of the smartphones and tablets operating systems, we primarily think of Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms. It's essentially become a two-horse race. But what would happen if one of the horses stumbled?

What would happen if Android failed?

Let's start at the most obvious point – why might Android fail?

Having been involved in the tech industry for more than two decades, I'm well aware of the ebb and flow of the high-tech tide. Things come, and then things go to make room for more new stuff. But at present I have to admit that Android wasn't on my radar as a technology that had the potential to wane. If anything, the increasing demand for smartphones and tablets – especially hardware that's cheaper than the iOS-powered stuff that Apple sells – should put Android on a sturdier footing.

That was until Rob Enderle, analyst for the Enderle Group, began highlighting potential chinks in the Android armor. And the weakness he zeroed in on was litigation related to security vulnerabilities.

"It is easy" writes Enderle in a column on TechNewsWorld, "to jump to an end game where there is a major disaster and Google, a carrier or an Android phone manufacturer would be held partially liable because it was their device that was used to trigger the disaster."

He goes on to list examples of Android security at its sloppiest, such as a hack that causes handsets to overheat and fail, and how Android can be used to poke holes in other security systems, such as those of an airliner.

Predicting future litigation against the platform "isn't a big jump," says Enderle, "because even the American Civil Liberties Union is taking action against this platform."

Enderle also points out that congress is now working on a law that would assign liability to firms that were hacked, and that this could hasten the demise of Android.

Another problem is how fickle Google is about projects. As Enderle quite rightly points out, outside of its core search and ad business, it seems that anything can be axed at short notice. Just ask how Reader users feel. 

While I believe that there is some merit to Enderle's point, the problem with the litigation argument is that it can be applied equally to all other operating systems. Sure, the popularity of Android makes it a prime target for litigation, but popularity makes Windows, iOS, and OS X targets too. And if Windows Phone or BlackBerry OS — or some other future platform — gains significant traction, then they too will become targets.

Security issues are not just an Android issue. They affect all operating systems. And if lawyers start getting involved, it's going to get messy for everyone.

But what about the fear that Google could lose interest in Android? The company has lost interest in many other projects in the past, such as Wave, Reader, Health, and Desktop to name just a few. I suppose this is possible, but this wouldn't mean the death of Android since the project is open source. There would be no shortage of companies willing to step in to take over. Sure, the loss of Google at the helm would be a blow, but it is unlikely that it would signal the end of the platform.

Personally, I think that the biggest threat to Android is not security – Google can throw money at this problem if it wants to get serious about security – but that of fragmentation stifling developers. This is not going to kill Android – in fact, it's a problem that's faced Android almost from the start – but it does mean that Android apps are lagging behind those available for iOS. As someone who uses both platforms – and uses the same apps on both platforms – this is getting to be more and more of a problem.

Apps are better on iOS than Android. Fact. 

That said, I think Android is safe. I'm not much of a betting man, but I'd be willing to put $10 down on Android being around – and run by Google – in five years time. And tech years are like dog years, so there's little point in prognosticating beyond that timespan.

Source : zdnet

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Google Glass: Let the evil commence

I was initially interested in contacting Android and iOS hacker extraordinaire Jay Freeman (aka, "Saurik") because he had recently notified the Android development community on Twitter that he had successfully "rooted" his Google Glass headset, with the bragging rights displayed below.

Freeman has since released a lengthy account of how the exploit was accomplished, providing the bits and the procedure to repeat it, and has offered a number of warnings to the Glass community regarding just how ineffective the security on the device currently is.

I wanted to know from Freeman if, once rooted, it is possible to programmatically disable the "recording LED indicator" on the device, so that one could stealthily record without any indication to the subject that they are being captured on-camera.

As it turns out, there is no such indicator light on the "Explorer" version of Google Glass that has recently shipped to the first generation of users and developers who were lucky enough to get their hands on the headset. Duh.

Still, there's room to make the device even stealthier. As Freeman explained to me during a phone interview, although there's no recording indicator per se, if you are being recorded, it's readily apparent from video activity being reflected off the wearer's eye prism that something is going on, particularly if you are in close proximity to the person.

But that can be changed once a Glass headset is rooted. Because Glass is an Android device, runs an ARM-based Linux kernel, and can run Android user space programs and custom libraries, any savvy developer can create code that modifies the default behavior in such a way that recording can occur with no display activity showing in the eye prism whatsoever.

And while the default video recording is 10 seconds, code could also be written that begins and stops recording for as long as needed with a custom gesture or head movement, or even innocuous custom voice commands like: "Boy, I'm tired" to begin, and "Boy, I need coffee" to end it.

You could write and side load an application that polls the camera and takes a still photo every 30 seconds, should you say ... want to "case" and thoroughly photodocument a place of business prior to committing a crime, or even engage in corporate espionage. Or simply capture ambient audio from unsuspecting people around you.

So while the 12.5GB of usable storage on this first version of Glass is fairly meager for storing HD video, it's plenty of space for storing still image JPG files and 64Kbps compressed audio. And that's not counting storage that could be accessed in the cloud in places like Dropbox, or even using a personal wi-fi connection to a smartphone with a large amount of internal memory.

The 5MP camera and the audio pickup of the current Glass Explorer Edition is fairly unspectacular. If an AOSP version of Glass's Android OS is ever published, there's certainly nothing to stop an OEM from producing a superior headset with optical zoom, a higher-resolution CMOS with superior light sensitivity, possibly even night vision, and significantly better microphones.

While Glass' current battery time is limited to about 5 hours of regular use and 20 minutes of run time while doing video recording, extended recording of video and audio could be accomplished through a thin USB connector wire (painted to match hair and skin color) hidden behind the neck, leading to a large external battery hidden in a coat or a vest such as, say, the $75 12000mah New Trent iCarrier that I carry with me on business trips to charge my smartphones.

Google intended the first version of Glass to look nerdy and clearly like a wearable computing device. But any number of techniques could be used to conceal the active components of the product through good industrial design and color blending, as well as through the use of prosthetics, makeup and hairstyles.

And if the existing Android OEM ecosystem is of any indication, it's a virtual certainty that we'll see Glass headsets that are licensed by third parties.

Once you have root on a Glass headset, any number of custom software packages could be installed without Google being able to prevent one from doing things that would make your hair stand on end, such as on-the-fly image and audio processing.

This is the kind of stuff that until now, only major intelligence agencies could do with very expensive surveillance equipment. Just wait until Israeli and Eastern European startups, which are staffed with former intelligence personnel who have a huge wealth of knowledge in using this kind of technology, get a hold of this thing.

There are tons of unlicensed Android phones and tablets being produced in China. Once the basic spec of Glass is available, there's nothing to stop an unscrupulous company in Asia from creating a Glass clone that's totally open without any hacking required.

And once Glass Explorer Edition's ROM makes it into the wild, all kinds of "Evil" re-spins can be produced to make the stock Glass into a Swiss Army surveillance kit for sociopaths, not just hackers.

Such an "Evil Glass" Android distribution may include all the software necessary to turn a 14-year-old into a walking stealth surveillance device that would have been the envy of the Mossad or China's Ministry of State Security only five or 10 years ago.

So we know that once a headset is rooted, the wearer can do all sorts of stuff with the device that Google never intended for them to do with it, and there are Glass applications already in the mind's eye of malicious people ready to use them for nefarious purposes.

But what about stuff that isn't being perpetrated by the wearer? What if a Glass headset starts doing stuff without the wearer's knowledge?

Well, as it turns out, as Freeman so thoroughly documents and explains on his website, there's a lot of potential for that, too.

Because the current implementation of Glass has no "pin lock" like an Android phone or tablet has, the device is always active when it is turned on, and thus it would be relatively simple to inject a headset using a USB-connected device and the Android SDK with an exploit along with a malware playload that say ... snaps pictures and records audio of everything you do, and stores and forwards it over the internet to the hacker without the wearer's knowledge.

In short, if you buy a Glass device, don't let the thing out of your sight.

Will Glass be used to "do the evil" that Google has pledged it would never engage in? Talk back and let me know.

Source : zdnet

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Android's two killer innovations since the iPhone 5 launch

It's been 229 days since Apple announced the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. In Silicon Valley time, that's roughly a millennium.

And we're unlikely to see major updates to the iPhone, iOS or any other major Apple products until this fall, based on CEO Tim Cook's comments during the company's latest earnings call.

Meanwhile, Android has lengthened its stride. 

I'm not talking about the Samsung Galaxy S4 with its flurry of software features, or the HTC One with its amazing hardware design. I'm talking about the killer feature in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as well as the latest version of the one killer app on Android that you can't get on iOS. 

Here's why those two big leapfrog innovations matter. 

1. Google Now: The killer feature

We first saw Google Now last June when Hugo Barra demoed Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" at Google I/O. While the demo had its share of whizbang-ness, it wasn't something that looked like a game-changer. It even appeared a bit gimmicky. But, with a steady stream of software improvements and the fact it's stunningly useful once it's activated and starts doing its thing, Google Now emerged as one of Android's biggest advantages over the iPhone. 

As I noted earlier this year, Google Now has given us one of the great "Ah, ha!" moments in tech in recent memory. It automatically alerts you when you need to leave for a meeting based on current traffic conditions, or warns you that your flight has been delayed, or reminds you that one of your favorite teams is playing tonight, or has navigation directions ready for you on that restaurant you just searched for — and it does all of this without you even having to configure anything. It's truly a big data moment, and although Google has indicated that it would like to bring Google Now to iOS, for now it's only available on Android and the iOS version will obviously never have the same deep integration. One of the things that makes Google Now so great is that it goes hand-in-hand with Android's other killer feature: notifications.

2. SwiftKey 4: The killer app

This one doesn't have anything to do with Google, but it has everything to do with Android. It's one of those apps that cannot exist on iOS because Apple doesn't give developers access to enough of the fundamental layers of the operating system, but Android does. Occasionally that can lead to malware threats and configuration issues, but other times you get amazing pieces of software like SwiftKey.

A replacement for the native Android keyboard, SwiftKey allows you to move a finger across the keyboard in one continuous motion over the letters of the word you'd like to spell and SwiftKey magically interprets that word at a high accuracy rate — especially for standard dictionary words. Often, it also predicts the next word you are going to type and if it's correct then you can select that word with one tap and then keep inputting new words. 

This is significantly faster than using the standard touch keyboard on Android or iPhone, and SwiftKey took another big step forward with the release of SwiftKey 4 in February. In the two months since it was released, it has saved me 7,749 keystrokes and made me 33% more efficient, according to the SwiftKey stats. It honestly feels even more efficient than that. Those of us who used a Palm Treo or a BlackBerry with a hardware keyboard before moving to virtual keyboards on iPhone or Android know that we definitely traded typing accuracy and speed for the benefits of better apps and ease-of-use. SwiftKey now helps overcome the keyboard drawback on Android.

Apple's challenge

It's been a very quiet year so far for Apple. While the iPhone remains simpler to use and still gets many of the best apps and app updates before Android does, Google Now and SwiftKey 4 are two powerful advantages that the iPhone is unlikely to match in 2013. 

That puts an important challenge on Apple's shoulders. The iPhone needs a unique next-step-forward innovation before the end of 2013, or else Android is likely to take its mantle as the platform where the future is unfolding.

Source : zdnet

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