Google

You can read a transcript of what’s going on in a Google+ Hangout in real-time — Closed Captioning, essentially — thanks to a new app released Thursday called Hangout Captions. The app provides a transcript of a Hangout that can be read by those who are deaf or have trouble hearing, allowing them to participate Continue Reading →

Everyone screamed for Ice Cream when it as released in October, and depending on your device, some are getting it faster than others. But with a successor already unveiled, some may end up skipping it. New figures show that eight months after 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) the eighth version of Google’s Android operating system — Continue Reading →

Google unveiled its media-streaming glowing orb to many oohs and ahhs, followed by head-scratches. The thing looks cool. And it sounds good, both in concept and fidelity. But two major questions remain: Who is it for, and how well does it work? Why It Matters: It matters because this is the first product like this Continue Reading →

The repair wizards at iFixit have gotten hold of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and have found that it absolutely bludgeons Amazon’s rival Kindle Fire tablet in terms of battery performance. According to iFixit, Google’s new tablet has “a 4326 mAh, 16 Wh battery that can last 9:49 hours” or more than two hours longer than Continue Reading →

Android devices may, at last, get the kind of sound performance that makes music and audio apps satisfying to use. We’ve suffered through generations of the OS and hardware that were quite the opposite. But material, measurable changes to software, combined with more rigorous standards for hardware makers, could change all of that soon. And Continue Reading →

Google’s latest operating system, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, is now running on more than 10 percent of Android devices. According to stats posted on Monday, Android 4.0+ is available on 10.9 percent of Android-based devices, up from 7.1 percent last month. Android Gingerbread, however, is still kicking, with the mobile OS present on 64 percent Continue Reading →

When you’re using Google for search, one of the cooler features is dragging or uploading an image into the search box and letting the company’s computer vision technology find results based on matches. The company has shared some interesting details as to how it’s making the search by image experience more useful as you’re trying Continue Reading →

Gmail users on iOS devices have an early gift prior to this week’s Google developer event: The Gmail on iOS app was updated on Monday with some key improvements to make the software better and on par with Android’s Gmail client. The biggest change is support for the native iOS Notification Center, but even the Continue Reading →

You may or may not realize that you have a Facebook email address. It’s an @facebook.com address you can use to correspond with people on external email accounts from your Facebook inbox. Though it was called a “Gmail killer” when it first came out in 2010, it seems instead to have been D.O.A. As far Continue Reading →

The San Francisco Bay Area is notorious for its great earthquakes….but the ripples and shockwaves don’t stop there- for the area is also famous for producing huge economic bubbles.  When I moved to San Francisco in 1995 from Chicago, I got a job as Program Manager at KCSM-TV, a PBS station in San Mateo.  I Continue Reading →