Tag: Google

Back in March, at the Google Cloud Next event, Google announced a new whiteboard-meets-collaboration tool, Jamboard.  The 55″ 4K monitor comes with a stylus for interactions (it’s passive so no pairing required) and can even distinguish between the stylus and your finger.  Think of drawing with the stylus and erasing with a finger.

The idea is to increase productivity.  You have a whiteboard session that multiple users can interact with from different locations.  That includes Drive and the rest of G Suite. You can then collaborate seamlessly and has a built-in camera so it can be the center piece of a conference room.  While Google did not say specifically it was aimed at Surface Hub from Microsoft, it’s pretty clear this is aimed to take it on.

For those of you who are on G Suite, you can now call your Google Cloud partner or rep and order your Jamboard.  It costs $4999 plus an annual maintance fee of $600 ($300 if you order by September 30th).  If you want the rolling stand, that’s $1199 before September 30th, or $1399 afterward.

Google Hangouts has officially dropped support of SMS for non Project Fi or Google Voice users.  The support ended yesterday and was something that had been planned since Google announced the change back in March.

The change is part of the overall strategy of Google to move their G Suite customers to the new Google Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat while leveraging Android Messages for SMS on Android devices.  For consumers, the focus is on Google Allo and Duo to meet these communications needs.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has just posted their first quarter 2017 results and they are nothing short of breathtaking.  The company’s revenue was $24.75 billion in the quarter, up 22% from the same period last year, and beat all expectations.  Operating income increased to $6.58 billion, up from the $5.3 billion for the previous year.  Netted out, the company made $5.4 billion in net income for the quarter.

Digging further, advertising revenues were up for the company in the quarter.  They rose to $21.4 billion while the Other Revenue for the company grew by $1 billion to $3.0 billion.  The Other Revenue section of the financial report as this is where hardware sales (Google Pixel, Google Home, Chromecast) are lumped together with things such as enterprise sales.  An increase here is a good reflection on how those business units are doing overall.

Last year, the Project Fi team quietly added a travel vending machine at San Jose International Airport (SJC).  The machine allowed Fi subscribers to get free travel gear such as eye covers, charging cables and other travel centric goodies.  Now they have decided to expand a bit.  In a Tweet yesterday, the Fi team announced that the Travel Trolley as they are called will be coming to eight new airports throughout the United States.

Save some space for us in your carry-on! The Project Fi Travel Trolley is coming to a few new airports ✈️ → https://t.co/bIruxIkC69 pic.twitter.com/Dr1YGVzcO4

— Project Fi (@projectfi) April 24, 2017

The list is pretty good and cover many high traffic or popular airports across the country

• PHL, Terminal F, just prior to the first gate
• ORD, Terminal 3, between concourse K and H
• MDW, Terminal 1, between Gate A5 & A3
• SJC, Terminal B, across from Gate 25
• MSP, Terminal 1, Concourse G
• SMF, Terminal B, across from Gate 12
• BUR, Terminal A, gate A3
• SEA, Concourse A, gate A3
• RDU, Terminal 2

The good news is that if you are not a Fi subscriber, you can still take part in the fun.

After two years of behind the scenes work, the new Google Earth has been announced and released today.  The update brings vast improvements to the app for Chrome on the web and the Android app along with several new features.  The web-based version of the new Earth is now available while the Android app, version 9.0 for those keeping score at home, is rolling out now to the Play Store.  The app sports an all new icon along with the app improvements.

The banner new feature in this update is the new Voyager feature.  Teaming up with scientist, non-profit organizations and storytellers, this new feature allows you to have an interactive guided tour of a locale within Google Earth.  My personal favorite is The Hidden World of National Parks which takes you on a journey through these protected areas here in the United States and includes a combination of Street Views, videos and, of course, interactive maps.

Google Text-to-speech is not an app you probably do a lot of tweaking on but it is an important foundational app for Android.  The app essentially serves as an engine for other apps so they can read text on the screen aloud to you.  For example, if you are in Google Play Books and want the app to read aloud a book, this is the app that makes the magic happen.  Or Google Translate to translate text.  So when an update comes out for it, it is important to get it.  The latest update to Google Text-to-speech is rolling out now and it is version 3.11.12 for those keeping score at home.  It comes with several new tweaks for users as well as new languages.

First, let’s cover the languages.  In this update, support for Bangla (India, Czech, Khmer, Napali, Sinhala and Ukrainian have been added to the engine.  Along with this, Google has added intonation control over several more voices that are in the engine and have made general improvements on many of the voices in the app.  Google did not specifically call out which languages were impacted by these latter two.