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Kinetisphere

28 June 2012

news

The past couple of days have been pretty busy for big G, trying to demonstrate every developer on earth why they should stick, migrate or try their hit platform Android (and brother Chrome) amongst they many other products they’ve got. One of the hardware surprises that was unveiled yesterday was their “Social” experiment Nexus Q, a new Airplay & Sonos competitor. But despite its gorgeous design, and “home-made” label, it lacks quite a substantial list of features to become your new living room toy.

But! There was this gigantic Nexus Q robotic sculpture at the entrance that big G asked SF-based design and engineering studio Bot & Dolly to create for them. And they did a rather impressive job…

The Kinetisphere sits on top of the famous German Kuka industrial robot (which B&d use for their Iris filming platform) (remember Audi’s Outrace sculpture from 2010?) replicating the Nexus Q and its led ring. For the event B&d tried to bring that “socialness” into the sculpture by proposing visitors to use one of the many controls that direct the sculpture (one for the heightm another one for its angle and a last one for the LED ring pattern).

Kinetisphere 2012 Bot&Dolly — calibrating the Kinetisphere – 2012 Bot&Dolly

Hopefully the Nexus Q will be popular enough… not to become one of those useless toys sitting in your living room… much like Sony’s Rolly. Maybe if Sony had partnered with B&d to create a massive Rolly the impact would have been different. The nice people @Engadget got to talk with Jeff Linnel about the creation process…

big G’s I/O 2011 bis

11 May 2011

news

And today it was all about Chrome OS, or nearly (well not really, only the buzzy keynote part of it). A deep Chrome OS demonstration was made, hardware integration, file managing, webstore, apps, more apps, more offline stuff support, more big partner names unveiled, hardware, programs and a constant message “always connected”.

The most interesting stuff from the Chrome OS side weren’t the hardware or the software themselves (despite agreeing that a browser-based OS for the masses is fairly groundbreaking), but the pricing & aggressive strategy Google has for the upcoming years.

Google is pointing a big gun at Microsoft head right now. Gauging Microsoft’s world domination from a software perspective. By offering extremely affordable machines ($28/month per user for businesses and $20/month per user for schools) with included software & hardware updates (we would have to see the engagement details) Google has just unveiled the last piece of their gruesome strategy: building up a serious Windows competitor and attacking Microsoft’s historical cash cow.

samsungnetbook2 — Samsung ChromeBook 12.1-inch & the usual stuff

I/O is obviously about much much more that Chrome OS and tons of sessions about dev tools, HTML5 coolness, libraries, games, marketplace etc took place (and still are). A few other interesting bits included a new redesign of Android’s market store, the Android Manifest (developers can now decide on which devices and… was that carriers too? their apps are used), or the (basic for survival) big steps towards app monetization Google has taken. Too much to tell, too many details.

Google have finally become the new Microsoft. Facebook… your move!

big G’s I/O 2011

10 May 2011

news

In your night soup too! Because Android’s omnipresence is about to get bigger, bolder, better? I was reading an article this morning that questioned Apples iPad supremacy. Just like with the Smartphone market, it’s not the “how” but the “when” (will Android and its tablet army claim market supremacy) that we want to know .

Today & tomo are Google’s days (bad date for Msoft to announce …. to announce something they bought). Google I/O 2011 is all about Android (so far, hopefully Chrome OS to follow), Android for home, a hardware standardization framework for Android, a Music iTunes (more like Amazon) service competitor… (not Android-only this time… but compatible with Android devices of course), a few tips on Android’s future OS version… Ice Cream Sandwich. Our stomach is about to get upset if we keep eating so much Android. Seriously.

So let’s start with the most evident one… Google “Music Beta” (the video up here). A project which clearly seems incomplete as no-one will be able to buy any tracks or albums directly from Google…. labels probably don’t want another diluted streaming service (especially now that Apple is about to launch theirs and Spotify about to enter the U.S…. nearly).

What Music Beta allows you to do however is to store up to 20K songs (you upload them for free to the cloud) and stream them wherever you want… desktop, Android phone, Tablet (details of the service this way). Then, like any other music library manager you can create your own playlists aaaaaaaaand save them locally (like with Spotify).

The rest of the Android new features announced today (like that open accessory API framework, or the movie rental option for Android market or some impressive figures) we’re not going to bore you with them. We’ll let Engadget do that for us (and you can follow their live coverage for tomo too this way).

Can’t imagine Apple’s belly…. but I’m sure they’re not that sad… after all Google hasn’t managed any important agreement with music labels… yet.