Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "A month ago, LeVar Burton and his friends at Reading Rainbow created a Kickstarter campaign designed to bring their app for the iPad and Kindle Fire to the Web at large. They asked for a million dollars, and quickly blew the doors off their goal, receiving over three million dollars in three days. There are 48 hours remaining in the fundraiser, which has garnered over 4.5 million dollars, and with over 92,000 contributors, is the most heavily backed Kickstarter campaign of all time. To sweeten the pot, Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane has offered to match any pledges over the $4 million mark, up to an additional million dollars."

We've mentioned this interesting PAC more than once, including when Steve Wozniak endorsed it. The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and got a bunch of them. This time, instead of asking via email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video. Here's a quote from the Mayday website:'We are a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs. Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony. We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. We set fundraising goals and then crowdfund those goals." Check the Mayday About page and you'll see that a whole bunch of Internet and coding luminaries are on board. You may also notice that they span the political spectrum; this is totally not a partisan effort. | Another quote from the website: "Wealthy funders are holding our democracy hostage. We want to pay the ransom and get it back." Is this an achievable goal? We'll never know if we don't try. | This is Part 1 of a 2-part video. (Alternate Video Link) Update: 07/02 23:42 GMT by T : Here's a link to part 2 of the video, too.

We've mentioned this interesting PAC more than once, including when Steve Wozniak endorsed it. The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and got a bunch of them. This time, instead of asking via email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video. Here's a quote from the Mayday website:'We are a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs. Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony. We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. We set fundraising goals and then crowdfund those goals." Check the Mayday About page and you'll see that a whole bunch of Internet and coding luminaries are on board. You may also notice that they span the political spectrum; this is totally not a partisan effort. | Another quote from the website: "Wealthy funders are holding our democracy hostage. We want to pay the ransom and get it back." Is this an achievable goal? We'll never know if we don't try. | This is Part 1 of a 2-part video. (Alternate Video Link) Update: 07/02 23:42 GMT by T : Here's a link to part 2 of the video, too.

We've mentioned this interesting PAC more than once, including when Steve Wozniak endorsed it. The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and got a bunch of them. This time, instead of asking via email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video. Here's a quote from the Mayday website:'We are a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs. Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony. We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. We set fundraising goals and then crowdfund those goals." Check the Mayday About page and you'll see that a whole bunch of Internet and coding luminaries are on board. You may also notice that they span the political spectrum; this is totally not a partisan effort. | Another quote from the website: "Wealthy funders are holding our democracy hostage. We want to pay the ransom and get it back." Is this an achievable goal? We'll never know if we don't try. | This is Part 1 of a 2-part video. (Alternate Video Link) Update: 07/02 23:42 GMT by T : Here's a link to part 2 of the video, too.

We've mentioned this interesting PAC more than once, including when Steve Wozniak endorsed it. The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and got a bunch of them. This time, instead of asking via email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video. Here's a quote from the Mayday website:'We are a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs. Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony. We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. We set fundraising goals and then crowdfund those goals." Check the Mayday About page and you'll see that a whole bunch of Internet and coding luminaries are on board. You may also notice that they span the political spectrum; this is totally not a partisan effort. | Another quote from the website: "Wealthy funders are holding our democracy hostage. We want to pay the ransom and get it back." Is this an achievable goal? We'll never know if we don't try. | This is Part 1 of a 2-part video. (Alternate Video Link) Update: 07/02 23:42 GMT by T : Here's a link to part 2 of the video, too.

We've mentioned this interesting PAC more than once, including when Steve Wozniak endorsed it. The original Mayday PAC goal was to raise $1 million. Now Larry is working on a second -- and more ambitious -- goal: To raise $5 million by July 4. We called for your questions on June 23, and got a bunch of them. This time, instead of asking via email, we used Google Hangout to ask via video. Here's a quote from the Mayday website:'We are a crowdfunded Super PAC to end all Super PACs. Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony. We’re kickstarting a Super PAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. We set fundraising goals and then crowdfund those goals." Check the Mayday About page and you'll see that a whole bunch of Internet and coding luminaries are on board. You may also notice that they span the political spectrum; this is totally not a partisan effort. | Another quote from the website: "Wealthy funders are holding our democracy hostage. We want to pay the ransom and get it back." Is this an achievable goal? We'll never know if we don't try. | This is Part 1 of a 2-part video. (Alternate Video Link) Update: 07/02 23:42 GMT by T : Here's a link to part 2 of the video, too.

tsu doh nimh writes In a move that may wind up helping spammers, Microsoft is blaming a new Canadian anti-spam law for the company's recent decision to stop sending regular emails about security updates for its Windows operating system and other Microsoft software. Some anti-spam experts who worked very closely on Canada's Anti-Spam Law (CASL) say they are baffled by Microsoft's response to a law which has been almost a decade in the making. Indeed, an exception in the law says it does not apply to commercial electronic messages that solely provide "warranty information, product recall information or safety or security information about a product, goods or a service that the person to whom the message is sent uses, has used or has purchased." Several people have observed that Microsoft likely is using the law as a convenient excuse for dumping an expensive delivery channel.

Facebook's recently disclosed 2012 experiment in altering the tone of what its users saw in their newsfeeds has brought it plenty of negative opinions to chew on. Here's one, pointed out by an anonymous reader: Facebook's methodology raises serious ethical questions. The team may have bent research standards too far, possibly overstepping criteria enshrined in federal law and human rights declarations. "If you are exposing people to something that causes changes in psychological status, that's experimentation," says James Grimmelmann, a professor of technology and the law at the University of Maryland. "This is the kind of thing that would require informed consent." For a very different take on the Facebook experiment, consider this defense of it from Tal Yarkoni, who thinks the criticism it's drawn is "misplaced": Given that Facebook has over half a billion users, it’s a foregone conclusion that every tiny change Facebook makes to the news feed or any other part of its websites induces a change in millions of people’s emotions. Yet nobody seems to complain about this much–presumably because, when you put it this way, it seems kind of silly to suggest that a company whose business model is predicated on getting its users to use its product more would do anything other than try to manipulate its users into, you know, using its product more. ... [H]aranguing Facebook and other companies like it for publicly disclosing scientifically interesting results of experiments that it is already constantly conducting anyway–and that are directly responsible for many of the positive aspects of the user experience–is not likely to accomplish anything useful. If anything, it’ll only ensure that, going forward, all of Facebook’s societally relevant experimental research is done in the dark, where nobody outside the company can ever find out–or complain–about it."

As reported by the Associated Press, via the Washington Post, an update on the promised (and now at least mostly successful) new disc-shaped craft and parachute technology intended for a NASA mission to Mars, though applicable to other space missions as well: A saucer-shaped NASA vehicle launched by balloon high into Earth’s atmosphere splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, completing a successful test on Saturday of technology that could be used to land on Mars. Since the twin Viking spacecraft landed on the red planet in 1976, NASA has relied on the same parachute design to slow landers and rovers after piercing through the thin Martian atmosphere. The $150 million experimental flight tested a novel vehicle and a giant parachute designed to deliver heavier spacecraft and eventually astronauts. Despite small problems like the giant parachute not deploying fully, NASA deemed the mission a success. ... [T]he parachute unfurled — if only partially — and guided the vehicle to an ocean splashdown about three hours later. At 110 feet in diameter, the parachute is twice as big as the one that carried the 1-ton Curiosity rover through the Martian atmosphere in 2011. Coatta said engineers won't look at the parachute problem as a failure, but as a way to learn more and apply that knowledge during future tests. ... A ship was sent to recover a "black box" designed to separate from the vehicle and float. Outfitted with a GPS beacon, the box contains the crucial flight data that scientists are eager to analyze. "That's really the treasure trove of all the details," Coatta said. "Pressure, temperature, force. High-definition video. All those measurements that are really key to us to understanding exactly what happens throughout this test."

McGruber (1417641) writes In December 2013, Slashdot reported the arrest of seven metro Atlanta residents for allegedly selling counterfeit MARTA Breeze cards, stored-value smart cards that passengers use as part of an automated fare collection system on Atlanta's subway. Now, six months later (June 2014), the seven suspects have finally been indicted. According to the indictment, the co-conspirators purchased legitimate Breeze cards for $1, then fraudulently placed unlimited or monthly rides on the cards. They then sold the fraudulent cards to MARTA riders for a discounted cash price. Distributors of the fraudulent cards were stationed at several subway stations. The indictment claims that the ring called their organization the "Underground Railroad."

An anonymous reader writes It didn't take long for Aereo to deal with the realities of the U.S. Supreme Court decision. As of 11:30am EDT today Aereo is suspending operations while they go back to U.S. District Court. In order to keep good will with customers during this time, they are refunding the last month's payment for service. curtwoodward (2147628) writes to point out that the decision which has shut down Aereo for now doesn't mean doom for other cloud services: Don't listen to the trolls---the Supremes were very clear that their ruling only applied to Aereo's livestream and things that look just like it. iCloud, Dropbox and friends are fine.

WIth an interesting followup to the recent news that Germany's power production by at least some measures was briefly dominated by solar production, AmiMoJo (196126) writes Germany is headed for its biggest electricity glut since 2011 as new coal-fired plants start and generation of wind and solar energy increases, weighing on power prices that have already dropped for three years. From December capacity will be at 117% of peak demand. The benchmark German electricity contract has slumped 36% since the end of 2010. "The new plants will run at current prices, but they won't cover their costs" said Ricardo Klimaschka, a power trader at Energieunion GmbH. Lower prices "leave a trail of blood in our balance sheet" according to Bernhard Guenther, CFO at RWE, Germany's biggest power producer. Wind and solar's share of installed German power capacity will rise to 42% by next year from 30% in 2010. The share of hard coal and lignite plant capacity will drop to 28% from 32%.

wiredmikey (1824622) writes Human Rights Watch on Friday demanded a clarification from Saudi Arabia over allegations from security researchers that the kingdom is infecting and monitoring dissidents' mobile phones with surveillance malware. The New York-based rights watchdog said surveillance software allegedly made by Italian firm Hacking Team mostly targeted individuals in Qatif district in Eastern Province, which has been the site of sporadic Shiite-led protests since February 2011. "We have documented how Saudi authorities routinely crack down on online activists who have embraced social media to call out human rights abuses," said Cynthia Wong, HRW's senior Internet researcher. "It seems that authorities may now be hacking into mobile phones, turning digital tools into just another way for the government to intimidate and silence independent voices." The accusations against the Saudi Government come days after researchers from Kaspersky Lab and Citizen Lab uncovered new details on advanced surveillance tools offered by HackingTeam [Note: mentioned in this earlier Slashdot story], including never before seen implants for smartphones running on iOS and Android.

blottsie writes: The Supreme Court ruled this week that it is illegal for police to search your phone without a warrant. But just because that's the new rule doesn't mean all 7.5 million law enforcement officers in the U.S. will abide by it. This guide, put together with the help of the EFF and ACLU, explains what to do if a police officer tries to search your phone without a warrant. Of course, that doesn't mean they don't have other ways of getting your data.

The Skysense website says, 'Save time and manage your drone operations remotely: whenever the batteries run out, land on a Skysense Charging Pad and take off as soon as the batteries are recharged. Without ever leaving the office.' That certainly sounds convenient. Since it looks like everybody and her dog is jumping on the flying drone bandwagon, the next step is obviously charging the things without human intervention. We're talking about battery-powered ones, of course, like the multicopter drones that are starting to be used for things like pipeline inspection, mapmaking, and security alarm response. Sadly, using drones for beer delivery is currently against the law in the USA, as are the Burrito Bomber and the much-ballyhooed Amazon Prime Air drone delivery system. All this may change in the next few years as the FAA figures out how to regulate the many commercial drones that will inevitably be zipping through our skies, landing on pads to recharge themselves, and continuing their missions without human intervention. The next step in drone automation will probably be using driverless ground vehicles as drone launching and control stations. Shockingly, there aren't a dozen Kickstarter projects raising money to build automated ground support systems for automated flying drones already, but surely they'll show up before long. (Alternate Video Link)

An anonymous reader writes As of approximately 9AM PDT, funding for the iFind project at Kickstarter, the one with the bluetooth tags that have no battery and that harvest energy from WiFi and other radio sources, has been suspended. No word yet on how this came about. Not an unexpected outcome since their claims of harvesting enough energy for a Bluetooth beacon from ambient wireless signals looked pretty far-fetched.

An anonymous reader writes with news that, not long after UK ISPs agreed to send piracy notices (Voluntary Copyright Alerts Program), thoughts have already turned toward adding criminal penalties. From the article: Prime Minister David Cameron's IP advisor believes that the carrot needs to be backed up by a stick. In a report published yesterday largely detailing the "Follow the Money" approach to dealing with pirate sites, Mike Weatherley MP says now is the time to think about VCAP’s potential failure. "The Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme (VCAP) is welcomed and will be a good step forward once it is hopefully in operation in 2015, although it is primarily an education tool," Weatherley says. ... "Warnings and fines are obvious first steps, with Internet access blocking and custodial sentencing for persistent and damaging infringers not to be ruled out in my opinion." These suggestions aren't new, but this is the second time in a matter of months that the Prime Minister's closest advisor on IP matters has spoken publicly about the possibility of putting persistent file-sharers in jail.

Last fall, Newegg lost a case against patent troll TQP for using SSL with RC4, despite arguments from Diffie of Diffie-Hellman key exchange. Intuit was also targeted by a lawsuit for infringing the same patent, and they were found not to be infringing. mpicpp (3454017) sends this excerpt from Ars: U.S. Circuit Judge William Bryson, sitting "by designation" in the Eastern District of Texas, has found in a summary judgment ruling (PDF) that the patent, owned by TQP Development, is not infringed by the two defendants remaining in the case, Intuit Corp. and Hertz Corp. In a separate ruling (PDF), Bryson rejected Intuit's arguments that the patent was invalid. Not a complete victory (a clearly bogus patent is still not invalidated), but it's a start.

Google I/O, the company's annual developer tracking^wdevelopers conference, has opened today in San Francisco. This year the company has reduced the number of conference sessions to 80, but also promised a broader approach than in previous years -- in other words, there may be a shift in focus a bit from Google's best known platforms (Chrome/Chrome OS and Android). Given its wide-ranging acquisitions and projects (like the recent purchase of Nest, which itself promptly bought Dropcam, the ever smarter fleet of self-driving cars, the growing number of Glass devices in the wild, and the announcement of a 3D scanning high end tablet quite unlike the Nexus line of tablets and phones), there's no shortage of edges to focus on. Judging from the booths set up in advance of the opening (like one with a sign announcing "The Physical Web," expect some of the stuff that gets lumped into "the Internet of Things." Watch this space -- updates will appear below -- for notes from the opening keynote, or follow along yourself with the live stream, and add your own commentary in the comments. In the days to come, watch for some video highlights of projects on display at I/O, too. Update: 06/25 17:41 GMT by T : Updates rolling in below on Android, wearables, Android in cars, Chromecast, smart watches, etc.Keep checking back! (Every few minutes, I get another chunk in there.) Note: the notes below are taken live from the I/O keynote; they're rough, and they'll keep getting cleaned up throughout. Please add corrections, amplifications, etc. in the comments below!

Update 1:

After a a quick glance at a few of the viewing parties around the world (taking place in 85 countries, 6 continents -- We get a glance at London, Brazil, and an all-female delegation in Nigeria ) VP of Apps Sundar Pichai Sr presented a few stats:

First, phones: Last year, there were 538 million active Android phone users -- now, says Puchai, 1.1 billion active users (20 billion texts, 93M selfless of which he says "about 31 M "are not faces."); phones checked 100B times/day.

Android tablets, he says, are up this year from 46pct of global market share to 62pct in 2014, when it comes to shipments. (And looking at YouTube use as a proxy: 28%last year, 2014 42%. App installs: up 236%.

Another stat that got a big round of applause: this year's IO has 20% women, more than 1000, up from 8% last year.

Pichai introduces Android One initiative, to get Android phones to price-sensitive market : Stock Android (same stock bar as in Nexus phones), plus allow OEMs to add their own stuff, but all the updates for system software comes straight from (Example phone from Micromax: 4.5", SD car, dual sim, FM radio: "costs less than $100" "launching w 3 OEMs in India next year: Karbonn, micromax, and Spice.)

Update 2:

Preview of Upcoming L release: Matthias Duarte VP design, on the look:

What is pixels had not just color, but depth? What is they can change shape in response to touch? "Material design," says Duarte, is the new watchword. A material that can change shape physically is difficult; but now UI elements can use specified depth elements, and the Android framework will do things like apply virtual light sources to give the elements evident placement.

• Typography Introduces font consistency -- using the font "robot" -- so you can use the same one on all hardware (he mentions watch, TV, tablet
• Rich, animated touch feedback.
• Animated icons for printer, play, etc.
• In L, developers can create "seamless animation from any screen to any other, between activities, and even between apps."

• Introduces Polymer, which also brings the same features to desktop development.

• Unified set of style guidelines for developers and designers. First draft out today at google.com/design.

Update 3: Avni Shah on Mobile web experience

• Chrome on Mobile 27m last year, now 300m -- 10x growth
• "Material design" again; physical-ish card-based searching: search results smoothly animate, include intelligent suggestions.
• redesigned recents -- "Recent" list integrates both apps and Chrome tabs
• Search improvements: Searching integrates recent use of apps and tabs, too: opening Yelp or OpenTable can drag in a recent searches, so for instance a search for a restaurant in your recent history will take you instantly to a restaurant if you open a restaurant-related app.
• app indexing

Update 4: Dave Burke, on the features:

The short view:

• New material theme
• Lockscreen notifications
• Prioritized notifications
• Head up notifications

ART, the new runtime in L

• supports mix of AOT, JIT, and Interpreted
• truly cows platform: ARM, x86, etc.

64-bit compatible:

• larger number registers
• newer instruction sets/li>
• increased addressable memory space/li>
• cross platform/li>

Graphics -- big upgrades in Android extension pack:

• tessellation
• geometry tools
• improved shaders
• Unreal engine running on NVIDIA-based tablet -- impressive rendering

Project Volta:

• improved battery instrument ion (battery historian -- lets you match)
• Battery Saver -- can extend us up to 90 minutes "witina typical day's use"

Other bits:

• Starting in Fall, you'll see high-end ("PC gaming performance in your packet") tablets shipping.
• Increased battery life.
• New garbage collector, memory allocator
• Tomorrow morning, L previews for Nexus devices, and SDK available to developers.

• Update 5:
  Pichai takes a dig :Custom keyboards, widgets -- those things happened in Android 4-5 years ago." Google Play Services ship every 4-6 weeks. Wants voice to be a major source of input:

• context aware

• voice enabled alls

• seamless
• emphasizes phone as the entry point, since users "always have their phone."

Update 6:

David Singleton: Dire Engineering, Android, on Android wearables:

• 3 months ago, Android Wear SDK introduced.
• both square and round screens supported
• sensors for information, and " to help you reach your fitness goals"
• Demonstrates "stream of cards" interface
• emphasizes the "material design" of this: rich touch-based interaction; long presses, wipes, etc. can give the small surface a lot of flexibility.
• voice reminders: "Remind me to check my mail when I get home" -- "home" is a recognized location, too.
• slight demo failure in showing voice input on Google Wear watch, but "moving on, that note *would* have been saved "
• from wrist, quick replies can be sent, calls can be rejected / sent to voice mail; phone an also be set to Do Not Disturb with a single swipe.Can be used to control devices around you, with voice controls
• ("play some music" to control enabled devices, with playback display on wrist.)
• heartbeat sensors
• turn by turn dirs on the wrist, from Google maps
• Full Android Wear SDk out today: most API from Android available here, which means you can do things like read the sensors etc. to make apps that run on the watch itself, as well as ones that connect as an interface to a phone or other device.
• Demo of Eat24 shows (and gets oddly huge applause) ordering and paying for pizza straight from a phone; guess this a pro-pizza crowd. Bigger applause when he says this runs on the watch itself,
• apps can be synched such that reading text on phone scrolls in on watch and vice versa
• big applause for claim that all the new watches are water resistant, so not risky to cook with them. (Food references again ;))
• Lyft app: "Call me a car" into watch, gets location from phone, calls a driver. Pretty slick.
• LG watch: available to order later today
• Samsung joining the Android War set (also available later today); Moto 360 -- "later this summer" draws uniform groans from crowd.

Update 7: Patrick Brady on bringing Android to the car

• intros Android Auto - connected apps and service s drivers want in the car
• Andy Brenner, product manager, shows how a phone connected to a car's display can integrate with the phone, while the apps all run on the phone.
• simplified display, just a few app icons, simple control surfaces
• Navigation, audio controls
• Google maps: in Auto, local search, suggestions, live traffic, turn-by-turn nav
• Completely voice enabled: Demo: "How late is the de Young museum open?" gets a spoken reply, to which "Navigate there" does what you'd hope it would -- starts navigation, with map.
• Voice enabled messaging
• Big applause line: "Today we're announcing the Google Auto SDK."
• More than 40 automakers signed up for Open Automotive alliance, first cars "before the end of this year."

Update 8: Dave Burke back for Android in the living room:

• introduces Android TV: "not a new platform: just same level of attention as tablets and phones have gotten:" one SDK for all form factors
• In L, Live TV -- gives way to integrate sources like HDMI.
• Press Home, it overlays over the live content. Not quite Apple TV remote, but nicely simplified options.
• Basically just needs a D-pad style input device; an Android watch, phone, etc, works for this. Surely there will be dedicated devices, too.
• Voice a big one, incl. for complex searches ""Oscar nominated movies of 2012"
• 10-foot view UI emphasis
• Gameplay through Android TV on "the biggest screen in your house."
• You can also use it like a Chromecast -- play phone / tablet through TV, stereo, etc.
• Says new lines from Sony, Sharp, Philips, will all run it; more from Acer, Asus, etc. later.
• Console style gaming.
• SDK: ADT one, available to debs through sign-up page.

Update 9: Rishi Chandra on Chromecast:

• Google Cast, as mentioned, coming to Google TV devices
• Lots of Google Cast Ready Apple's: went from just a few (like NetFlix) to many dozens. Any developer (iOS, ChromeOS, Android) can extend their app to the Google Cast world through SDK.
• Today, announcing new list of apps at Chromecast.com/app
• Easy authentication (opt-in feature, so you can control, though), no complicated hassle of adding a new user who wants to show you a quick home movie.
• When TVs not being watched? New "GoogleCast "ambient" experience background pictures, etc. (Pretty, but wouldn't it be nice to save the electricity, in most cases?) Some nice eye candy in form of curated, "safe" pictures though, and fun geographic-centric ones, too, drawn from Google Earth.
• Emphasis on Voice search
• All android devices can be attached / streamed through it

Update 10: Sundar Pichae back again to talk ChromeOS and Android for Work:

• Top 10 highest rated lap opts on Amazon: all chromebooks 6x growth this year in k-12 schools
• notices from phone can now show up on Chromebooks
• apps, too: This seems to be couched in "some apps," *but* for those apps (like Evernote), "everything just works." On the Chromebook as it is on the phone or tablet, forever and ever, amen.
• Flipboard, too.
• Profiles: lets you use corporate stuff, but with full separation of data, and high security.
• For developers, no modification of existing apps needed.
• Gives a nod to Samsung for developing Knox, says that work is now integrated with the Android ecosystem.
• In fall, a certified Android to work program.
• Announces Native office editing within Google Docs suite of editors -- works on MS Office docs directly (nice!) rather than converting to Google Docs as intermediary.

Update 11: Urs Hoelzle on Google Cloud platform

(Delayed by lunch lines and network downtime -- sorry)

• Compute - compute engine, app engine
• Storage - cloud storage, cloud SQL
• App Service - Big Query, Cloud endpoints
• No need for constructs of upfront purchase
• New cloud debugging features: Cloud save, Debugger, Trace, Monitoring (comes from Stackdriver, recent Google acquisition)
• Announces Cloud Dataflow: managed service for analyzing arbitrarily large datasets, either batch or in real time. Eric Schmidt demos with World Cup data.

[Note: Hoelzle interrupted by protester: "You all work for a totalitarian company that builds robots to kill people."]

Update 12: Elllie Powers: Project Manager for Google Play

• Her domain: how Google helps developers create, distribute (including searchability), and monetize apps
• making testing easier: Announces that "the appurify team is joining Google"; cross-platform cloud testing service
• Google fit platform preview - single set of APIs to manage apps, sensors on cross-platform devices, incl. wearables. This is coming "in a few weeks."

Update 13: And finally ...

Google IO has a tradition of giving out cool hardware to attendees; this year, the first thing announced is low-key by any standards, never mind the glare of the tablets, phones, etc. that have been handed out are previous IOs: called Cardboard, it's the result of one of the "20 percent" projects that Google employees are encouraged to take part in: A chunk of cardboard slightly wider and slightly thinner than a trade paperback can be folded and velcroed in place to create a pair of goggles, into which a smartphone can be inserted. Instant movie viewing environment for the airplane, if you don't mind feeling curious stares. It's no Occulus Rift; maybe it's best used as a stereoscope.

The real swag at I/O this year, though, is a smart watch, or rather two of them: Samsung and LG watches will be given out tomorrow to the several thousand attendees (one each), and later in the summer, Motorola's will be, too. (By post.) Interesting: there aren't that many modern computing devices with round interfaces. (Not zero, but not many.)

Google I/O, the company's annual developer tracking^wdevelopers conference, has opened today in San Francisco. This year the company has reduced the number of conference sessions to 80, but also promised a broader approach than in previous years -- in other words, there may be a shift in focus a bit from Google's best known platforms (Chrome/Chrome OS and Android). Given its wide-ranging acquisitions and projects (like the recent purchase of Nest, which itself promptly bought Dropcam, the ever smarter fleet of self-driving cars, the growing number of Glass devices in the wild, and the announcement of a 3D scanning high end tablet quite unlike the Nexus line of tablets and phones), there's no shortage of edges to focus on. Judging from the booths set up in advance of the opening (like one with a sign announcing "The Physical Web," expect some of the stuff that gets lumped into "the Internet of Things." Watch this space -- updates will appear below -- for notes from the opening keynote, or follow along yourself with the live stream, and add your own commentary in the comments. In the days to come, watch for some video highlights of projects on display at I/O, too. Update: 06/25 17:41 GMT by T : Updates rolling in below on Android, wearables, Android in cars, Chromecast, smart watches, etc.Keep checking back! (Every few minutes, I get another chunk in there.) Note: the notes below are taken live from the I/O keynote; they're rough, and they'll keep getting cleaned up throughout. Please add corrections, amplifications, etc. in the comments below!

Update 1:

After a a quick glance at a few of the viewing parties around the world (taking place in 85 countries, 6 continents -- We get a glance at London, Brazil, and an all-female delegation in Nigeria ) VP of Apps Sundar Pichai Sr presented a few stats:

First, phones: Last year, there were 538 million active Android phone users -- now, says Puchai, 1.1 billion active users (20 billion texts, 93M selfless of which he says "about 31 M "are not faces."); phones checked 100B times/day.

Android tablets, he says, are up this year from 46pct of global market share to 62pct in 2014, when it comes to shipments. (And looking at YouTube use as a proxy: 28%last year, 2014 42%. App installs: up 236%.

Another stat that got a big round of applause: this year's IO has 20% women, more than 1000, up from 8% last year.

Pichai introduces Android One initiative, to get Android phones to price-sensitive market : Stock Android (same stock bar as in Nexus phones), plus allow OEMs to add their own stuff, but all the updates for system software comes straight from (Example phone from Micromax: 4.5", SD car, dual sim, FM radio: "costs less than $100" "launching w 3 OEMs in India next year: Karbonn, micromax, and Spice.)

Update 2:

Preview of Upcoming L release: Matthias Duarte VP design, on the look:

What is pixels had not just color, but depth? What is they can change shape in response to touch? "Material design," says Duarte, is the new watchword. A material that can change shape physically is difficult; but now UI elements can use specified depth elements, and the Android framework will do things like apply virtual light sources to give the elements evident placement.

• Typography Introduces font consistency -- using the font "robot" -- so you can use the same one on all hardware (he mentions watch, TV, tablet
• Rich, animated touch feedback.
• Animated icons for printer, play, etc.
• In L, developers can create "seamless animation from any screen to any other, between activities, and even between apps."

• Introduces Polymer, which also brings the same features to desktop development.

• Unified set of style guidelines for developers and designers. First draft out today at google.com/design.

Update 3: Avni Shah on Mobile web experience

• Chrome on Mobile 27m last year, now 300m -- 10x growth
• "Material design" again; physical-ish card-based searching: search results smoothly animate, include intelligent suggestions.
• redesigned recents -- "Recent" list integrates both apps and Chrome tabs
• Search improvements: Searching integrates recent use of apps and tabs, too: opening Yelp or OpenTable can drag in a recent searches, so for instance a search for a restaurant in your recent history will take you instantly to a restaurant if you open a restaurant-related app.
• app indexing

Update 4: Dave Burke, on the features:

The short view:

• New material theme
• Lockscreen notifications
• Prioritized notifications
• Head up notifications

ART, the new runtime in L

• supports mix of AOT, JIT, and Interpreted
• truly cows platform: ARM, x86, etc.

64-bit compatible:

• larger number registers
• newer instruction sets/li>
• increased addressable memory space/li>
• cross platform/li>

Graphics -- big upgrades in Android extension pack:

• tessellation
• geometry tools
• improved shaders
• Unreal engine running on NVIDIA-based tablet -- impressive rendering

Project Volta:

• improved battery instrument ion (battery historian -- lets you match)
• Battery Saver -- can extend us up to 90 minutes "witina typical day's use"

Other bits:

• Starting in Fall, you'll see high-end ("PC gaming performance in your packet") tablets shipping.
• Increased battery life.
• New garbage collector, memory allocator
• Tomorrow morning, L previews for Nexus devices, and SDK available to developers.

• Update 5:
  Pichai takes a dig :Custom keyboards, widgets -- those things happened in Android 4-5 years ago." Google Play Services ship every 4-6 weeks. Wants voice to be a major source of input:

• context aware

• voice enabled alls

• seamless
• emphasizes phone as the entry point, since users "always have their phone."

Update 6:

David Singleton: Dire Engineering, Android, on Android wearables:

• 3 months ago, Android Wear SDK introduced.
• both square and round screens supported
• sensors for information, and " to help you reach your fitness goals"
• Demonstrates "stream of cards" interface
• emphasizes the "material design" of this: rich touch-based interaction; long presses, wipes, etc. can give the small surface a lot of flexibility.
• voice reminders: "Remind me to check my mail when I get home" -- "home" is a recognized location, too.
• slight demo failure in showing voice input on Google Wear watch, but "moving on, that note *would* have been saved "
• from wrist, quick replies can be sent, calls can be rejected / sent to voice mail; phone an also be set to Do Not Disturb with a single swipe.Can be used to control devices around you, with voice controls
• ("play some music" to control enabled devices, with playback display on wrist.)
• heartbeat sensors
• turn by turn dirs on the wrist, from Google maps
• Full Android Wear SDk out today: most API from Android available here, which means you can do things like read the sensors etc. to make apps that run on the watch itself, as well as ones that connect as an interface to a phone or other device.
• Demo of Eat24 shows (and gets oddly huge applause) ordering and paying for pizza straight from a phone; guess this a pro-pizza crowd. Bigger applause when he says this runs on the watch itself,
• apps can be synched such that reading text on phone scrolls in on watch and vice versa
• big applause for claim that all the new watches are water resistant, so not risky to cook with them. (Food references again ;))
• Lyft app: "Call me a car" into watch, gets location from phone, calls a driver. Pretty slick.
• LG watch: available to order later today
• Samsung joining the Android War set (also available later today); Moto 360 -- "later this summer" draws uniform groans from crowd.

Update 7: Patrick Brady on bringing Android to the car

• intros Android Auto - connected apps and service s drivers want in the car
• Andy Brenner, product manager, shows how a phone connected to a car's display can integrate with the phone, while the apps all run on the phone.
• simplified display, just a few app icons, simple control surfaces
• Navigation, audio controls
• Google maps: in Auto, local search, suggestions, live traffic, turn-by-turn nav
• Completely voice enabled: Demo: "How late is the de Young museum open?" gets a spoken reply, to which "Navigate there" does what you'd hope it would -- starts navigation, with map.
• Voice enabled messaging
• Big applause line: "Today we're announcing the Google Auto SDK."
• More than 40 automakers signed up for Open Automotive alliance, first cars "before the end of this year."

Update 8: Dave Burke back for Android in the living room:

• introduces Android TV: "not a new platform: just same level of attention as tablets and phones have gotten:" one SDK for all form factors
• In L, Live TV -- gives way to integrate sources like HDMI.
• Press Home, it overlays over the live content. Not quite Apple TV remote, but nicely simplified options.
• Basically just needs a D-pad style input device; an Android watch, phone, etc, works for this. Surely there will be dedicated devices, too.
• Voice a big one, incl. for complex searches ""Oscar nominated movies of 2012"
• 10-foot view UI emphasis
• Gameplay through Android TV on "the biggest screen in your house."
• You can also use it like a Chromecast -- play phone / tablet through TV, stereo, etc.
• Says new lines from Sony, Sharp, Philips, will all run it; more from Acer, Asus, etc. later.
• Console style gaming.
• SDK: ADT one, available to debs through sign-up page.

Update 9: Rishi Chandra on Chromecast:

• Google Cast, as mentioned, coming to Google TV devices
• Lots of Google Cast Ready Apple's: went from just a few (like NetFlix) to many dozens. Any developer (iOS, ChromeOS, Android) can extend their app to the Google Cast world through SDK.
• Today, announcing new list of apps at Chromecast.com/app
• Easy authentication (opt-in feature, so you can control, though), no complicated hassle of adding a new user who wants to show you a quick home movie.
• When TVs not being watched? New "GoogleCast "ambient" experience background pictures, etc. (Pretty, but wouldn't it be nice to save the electricity, in most cases?) Some nice eye candy in form of curated, "safe" pictures though, and fun geographic-centric ones, too, drawn from Google Earth.
• Emphasis on Voice search
• All android devices can be attached / streamed through it

Update 10: Sundar Pichae back again to talk ChromeOS and Android for Work:

• Top 10 highest rated lap opts on Amazon: all chromebooks 6x growth this year in k-12 schools
• notices from phone can now show up on Chromebooks
• apps, too: This seems to be couched in "some apps," *but* for those apps (like Evernote), "everything just works." On the Chromebook as it is on the phone or tablet, forever and ever, amen.
• Flipboard, too.
• Profiles: lets you use corporate stuff, but with full separation of data, and high security.
• For developers, no modification of existing apps needed.
• Gives a nod to Samsung for developing Knox, says that work is now integrated with the Android ecosystem.
• In fall, a certified Android to work program.
• Announces Native office editing within Google Docs suite of editors -- works on MS Office docs directly (nice!) rather than converting to Google Docs as intermediary.

Update 11: Urs Hoelzle on Google Cloud platform

(Delayed by lunch lines and network downtime -- sorry)

• Compute - compute engine, app engine
• Storage - cloud storage, cloud SQL
• App Service - Big Query, Cloud endpoints
• No need for constructs of upfront purchase
• New cloud debugging features: Cloud save, Debugger, Trace, Monitoring (comes from Stackdriver, recent Google acquisition)
• Announces Cloud Dataflow: managed service for analyzing arbitrarily large datasets, either batch or in real time. Eric Schmidt demos with World Cup data.

[Note: Hoelzle interrupted by protester: "You all work for a totalitarian company that builds robots to kill people."]

Update 12: Elllie Powers: Project Manager for Google Play

• Her domain: how Google helps developers create, distribute (including searchability), and monetize apps
• making testing easier: Announces that "the appurify team is joining Google"; cross-platform cloud testing service
• Google fit platform preview - single set of APIs to manage apps, sensors on cross-platform devices, incl. wearables. This is coming "in a few weeks."

Update 13: And finally ...

Google IO has a tradition of giving out cool hardware to attendees; this year, the first thing announced is low-key by any standards, never mind the glare of the tablets, phones, etc. that have been handed out are previous IOs: called Cardboard, it's the result of one of the "20 percent" projects that Google employees are encouraged to take part in: A chunk of cardboard slightly wider and slightly thinner than a trade paperback can be folded and velcroed in place to create a pair of goggles, into which a smartphone can be inserted. Instant movie viewing environment for the airplane, if you don't mind feeling curious stares. It's no Occulus Rift; maybe it's best used as a stereoscope.

The real swag at I/O this year, though, is a smart watch, or rather two of them: Samsung and LG watches will be given out tomorrow to the several thousand attendees (one each), and later in the summer, Motorola's will be, too. (By post.) Interesting: there aren't that many modern computing devices with round interfaces. (Not zero, but not many.)

Google I/O, the company's annual developer tracking^wdevelopers conference, has opened today in San Francisco. This year the company has reduced the number of conference sessions to 80, but also promised a broader approach than in previous years -- in other words, there may be a shift in focus a bit from Google's best known platforms (Chrome/Chrome OS and Android). Given its wide-ranging acquisitions and projects (like the recent purchase of Nest, which itself promptly bought Dropcam, the ever smarter fleet of self-driving cars, the growing number of Glass devices in the wild, and the announcement of a 3D scanning high end tablet quite unlike the Nexus line of tablets and phones), there's no shortage of edges to focus on. Judging from the booths set up in advance of the opening (like one with a sign announcing "The Physical Web," expect some of the stuff that gets lumped into "the Internet of Things." Watch this space -- updates will appear below -- for notes from the opening keynote, or follow along yourself with the live stream, and add your own commentary in the comments. In the days to come, watch for some video highlights of projects on display at I/O, too. Update: 06/25 17:41 GMT by T : Updates rolling in below on Android, wearables, Android in cars, Chromecast, smart watches, etc.Keep checking back! (Every few minutes, I get another chunk in there.) Note: the notes below are taken live from the I/O keynote; they're rough, and they'll keep getting cleaned up throughout. Please add corrections, amplifications, etc. in the comments below!

Update 1:

After a a quick glance at a few of the viewing parties around the world (taking place in 85 countries, 6 continents -- We get a glance at London, Brazil, and an all-female delegation in Nigeria ) VP of Apps Sundar Pichai Sr presented a few stats:

First, phones: Last year, there were 538 million active Android phone users -- now, says Puchai, 1.1 billion active users (20 billion texts, 93M selfless of which he says "about 31 M "are not faces."); phones checked 100B times/day.

Android tablets, he says, are up this year from 46pct of global market share to 62pct in 2014, when it comes to shipments. (And looking at YouTube use as a proxy: 28%last year, 2014 42%. App installs: up 236%.

Another stat that got a big round of applause: this year's IO has 20% women, more than 1000, up from 8% last year.

Pichai introduces Android One initiative, to get Android phones to price-sensitive market : Stock Android (same stock bar as in Nexus phones), plus allow OEMs to add their own stuff, but all the updates for system software comes straight from (Example phone from Micromax: 4.5", SD car, dual sim, FM radio: "costs less than $100" "launching w 3 OEMs in India next year: Karbonn, micromax, and Spice.)

Update 2:

Preview of Upcoming L release: Matthias Duarte VP design, on the look:

What is pixels had not just color, but depth? What is they can change shape in response to touch? "Material design," says Duarte, is the new watchword. A material that can change shape physically is difficult; but now UI elements can use specified depth elements, and the Android framework will do things like apply virtual light sources to give the elements evident placement.

• Typography Introduces font consistency -- using the font "robot" -- so you can use the same one on all hardware (he mentions watch, TV, tablet
• Rich, animated touch feedback.
• Animated icons for printer, play, etc.
• In L, developers can create "seamless animation from any screen to any other, between activities, and even between apps."

• Introduces Polymer, which also brings the same features to desktop development.

• Unified set of style guidelines for developers and designers. First draft out today at google.com/design.

Update 3: Avni Shah on Mobile web experience

• Chrome on Mobile 27m last year, now 300m -- 10x growth
• "Material design" again; physical-ish card-based searching: search results smoothly animate, include intelligent suggestions.
• redesigned recents -- "Recent" list integrates both apps and Chrome tabs
• Search improvements: Searching integrates recent use of apps and tabs, too: opening Yelp or OpenTable can drag in a recent searches, so for instance a search for a restaurant in your recent history will take you instantly to a restaurant if you open a restaurant-related app.
• app indexing

Update 4: Dave Burke, on the features:

The short view:

• New material theme
• Lockscreen notifications
• Prioritized notifications
• Head up notifications

ART, the new runtime in L

• supports mix of AOT, JIT, and Interpreted
• truly cows platform: ARM, x86, etc.

64-bit compatible:

• larger number registers
• newer instruction sets/li>
• increased addressable memory space/li>
• cross platform/li>

Graphics -- big upgrades in Android extension pack:

• tessellation
• geometry tools
• improved shaders
• Unreal engine running on NVIDIA-based tablet -- impressive rendering

Project Volta:

• improved battery instrument ion (battery historian -- lets you match)
• Battery Saver -- can extend us up to 90 minutes "witina typical day's use"

Other bits:

• Starting in Fall, you'll see high-end ("PC gaming performance in your packet") tablets shipping.
• Increased battery life.
• New garbage collector, memory allocator
• Tomorrow morning, L previews for Nexus devices, and SDK available to developers.

• Update 5:
  Pichai takes a dig :Custom keyboards, widgets -- those things happened in Android 4-5 years ago." Google Play Services ship every 4-6 weeks. Wants voice to be a major source of input:

• context aware

• voice enabled alls

• seamless
• emphasizes phone as the entry point, since users "always have their phone."

Update 6:

David Singleton: Dire Engineering, Android, on Android wearables:

• 3 months ago, Android Wear SDK introduced.
• both square and round screens supported
• sensors for information, and " to help you reach your fitness goals"
• Demonstrates "stream of cards" interface
• emphasizes the "material design" of this: rich touch-based interaction; long presses, wipes, etc. can give the small surface a lot of flexibility.
• voice reminders: "Remind me to check my mail when I get home" -- "home" is a recognized location, too.
• slight demo failure in showing voice input on Google Wear watch, but "moving on, that note *would* have been saved "
• from wrist, quick replies can be sent, calls can be rejected / sent to voice mail; phone an also be set to Do Not Disturb with a single swipe.Can be used to control devices around you, with voice controls
• ("play some music" to control enabled devices, with playback display on wrist.)
• heartbeat sensors
• turn by turn dirs on the wrist, from Google maps
• Full Android Wear SDk out today: most API from Android available here, which means you can do things like read the sensors etc. to make apps that run on the watch itself, as well as ones that connect as an interface to a phone or other device.
• Demo of Eat24 shows (and gets oddly huge applause) ordering and paying for pizza straight from a phone; guess this a pro-pizza crowd. Bigger applause when he says this runs on the watch itself,
• apps can be synched such that reading text on phone scrolls in on watch and vice versa
• big applause for claim that all the new watches are water resistant, so not risky to cook with them. (Food references again ;))
• Lyft app: "Call me a car" into watch, gets location from phone, calls a driver. Pretty slick.
• LG watch: available to order later today
• Samsung joining the Android War set (also available later today); Moto 360 -- "later this summer" draws uniform groans from crowd.

Update 7: Patrick Brady on bringing Android to the car

• intros Android Auto - connected apps and service s drivers want in the car
• Andy Brenner, product manager, shows how a phone connected to a car's display can integrate with the phone, while the apps all run on the phone.
• simplified display, just a few app icons, simple control surfaces
• Navigation, audio controls
• Google maps: in Auto, local search, suggestions, live traffic, turn-by-turn nav
• Completely voice enabled: Demo: "How late is the de Young museum open?" gets a spoken reply, to which "Navigate there" does what you'd hope it would -- starts navigation, with map.
• Voice enabled messaging
• Big applause line: "Today we're announcing the Google Auto SDK."
• More than 40 automakers signed up for Open Automotive alliance, first cars "before the end of this year."

Update 8: Dave Burke back for Android in the living room:

• introduces Android TV: "not a new platform: just same level of attention as tablets and phones have gotten:" one SDK for all form factors
• In L, Live TV -- gives way to integrate sources like HDMI.
• Press Home, it overlays over the live content. Not quite Apple TV remote, but nicely simplified options.
• Basically just needs a D-pad style input device; an Android watch, phone, etc, works for this. Surely there will be dedicated devices, too.
• Voice a big one, incl. for complex searches ""Oscar nominated movies of 2012"
• 10-foot view UI emphasis
• Gameplay through Android TV on "the biggest screen in your house."
• You can also use it like a Chromecast -- play phone / tablet through TV, stereo, etc.
• Says new lines from Sony, Sharp, Philips, will all run it; more from Acer, Asus, etc. later.
• Console style gaming.
• SDK: ADT one, available to debs through sign-up page.

Update 9: Rishi Chandra on Chromecast:

• Google Cast, as mentioned, coming to Google TV devices
• Lots of Google Cast Ready Apple's: went from just a few (like NetFlix) to many dozens. Any developer (iOS, ChromeOS, Android) can extend their app to the Google Cast world through SDK.
• Today, announcing new list of apps at Chromecast.com/app
• Easy authentication (opt-in feature, so you can control, though), no complicated hassle of adding a new user who wants to show you a quick home movie.
• When TVs not being watched? New "GoogleCast "ambient" experience background pictures, etc. (Pretty, but wouldn't it be nice to save the electricity, in most cases?) Some nice eye candy in form of curated, "safe" pictures though, and fun geographic-centric ones, too, drawn from Google Earth.
• Emphasis on Voice search
• All android devices can be attached / streamed through it

Update 10: Sundar Pichae back again to talk ChromeOS and Android for Work:

• Top 10 highest rated lap opts on Amazon: all chromebooks 6x growth this year in k-12 schools
• notices from phone can now show up on Chromebooks
• apps, too: This seems to be couched in "some apps," *but* for those apps (like Evernote), "everything just works." On the Chromebook as it is on the phone or tablet, forever and ever, amen.
• Flipboard, too.
• Profiles: lets you use corporate stuff, but with full separation of data, and high security.
• For developers, no modification of existing apps needed.
• Gives a nod to Samsung for developing Knox, says that work is now integrated with the Android ecosystem.
• In fall, a certified Android to work program.
• Announces Native office editing within Google Docs suite of editors -- works on MS Office docs directly (nice!) rather than converting to Google Docs as intermediary.

Update 11: Urs Hoelzle on Google Cloud platform

(Delayed by lunch lines and network downtime -- sorry)

• Compute - compute engine, app engine
• Storage - cloud storage, cloud SQL
• App Service - Big Query, Cloud endpoints
• No need for constructs of upfront purchase
• New cloud debugging features: Cloud save, Debugger, Trace, Monitoring (comes from Stackdriver, recent Google acquisition)
• Announces Cloud Dataflow: managed service for analyzing arbitrarily large datasets, either batch or in real time. Eric Schmidt demos with World Cup data.

[Note: Hoelzle interrupted by protester: "You all work for a totalitarian company that builds robots to kill people."]

Update 12: Elllie Powers: Project Manager for Google Play

• Her domain: how Google helps developers create, distribute (including searchability), and monetize apps
• making testing easier: Announces that "the appurify team is joining Google"; cross-platform cloud testing service
• Google fit platform preview - single set of APIs to manage apps, sensors on cross-platform devices, incl. wearables. This is coming "in a few weeks."

Update 13: And finally ...

Google IO has a tradition of giving out cool hardware to attendees; this year, the first thing announced is low-key by any standards, never mind the glare of the tablets, phones, etc. that have been handed out are previous IOs: called Cardboard, it's the result of one of the "20 percent" projects that Google employees are encouraged to take part in: A chunk of cardboard slightly wider and slightly thinner than a trade paperback can be folded and velcroed in place to create a pair of goggles, into which a smartphone can be inserted. Instant movie viewing environment for the airplane, if you don't mind feeling curious stares. It's no Occulus Rift; maybe it's best used as a stereoscope.

The real swag at I/O this year, though, is a smart watch, or rather two of them: Samsung and LG watches will be given out tomorrow to the several thousand attendees (one each), and later in the summer, Motorola's will be, too. (By post.) Interesting: there aren't that many modern computing devices with round interfaces. (Not zero, but not many.)

Google I/O, the company's annual developer tracking^wdevelopers conference, has opened today in San Francisco. This year the company has reduced the number of conference sessions to 80, but also promised a broader approach than in previous years -- in other words, there may be a shift in focus a bit from Google's best known platforms (Chrome/Chrome OS and Android). Given its wide-ranging acquisitions and projects (like the recent purchase of Nest, which itself promptly bought Dropcam, the ever smarter fleet of self-driving cars, the growing number of Glass devices in the wild, and the announcement of a 3D scanning high end tablet quite unlike the Nexus line of tablets and phones), there's no shortage of edges to focus on. Judging from the booths set up in advance of the opening (like one with a sign announcing "The Physical Web," expect some of the stuff that gets lumped into "the Internet of Things." Watch this space -- updates will appear below -- for notes from the opening keynote, or follow along yourself with the live stream, and add your own commentary in the comments. In the days to come, watch for some video highlights of projects on display at I/O, too. Update: 06/25 17:41 GMT by T : Updates rolling in below on Android, wearables, Android in cars, Chromecast, smart watches, etc.Keep checking back! (Every few minutes, I get another chunk in there.) Note: the notes below are taken live from the I/O keynote; they're rough, and they'll keep getting cleaned up throughout. Please add corrections, amplifications, etc. in the comments below!

Update 1:

After a a quick glance at a few of the viewing parties around the world (taking place in 85 countries, 6 continents -- We get a glance at London, Brazil, and an all-female delegation in Nigeria ) VP of Apps Sundar Pichai Sr presented a few stats:

First, phones: Last year, there were 538 million active Android phone users -- now, says Puchai, 1.1 billion active users (20 billion texts, 93M selfless of which he says "about 31 M "are not faces."); phones checked 100B times/day.

Android tablets, he says, are up this year from 46pct of global market share to 62pct in 2014, when it comes to shipments. (And looking at YouTube use as a proxy: 28%last year, 2014 42%. App installs: up 236%.

Another stat that got a big round of applause: this year's IO has 20% women, more than 1000, up from 8% last year.

Pichai introduces Android One initiative, to get Android phones to price-sensitive market : Stock Android (same stock bar as in Nexus phones), plus allow OEMs to add their own stuff, but all the updates for system software comes straight from (Example phone from Micromax: 4.5", SD car, dual sim, FM radio: "costs less than $100" "launching w 3 OEMs in India next year: Karbonn, micromax, and Spice.)

Update 2:

Preview of Upcoming L release: Matthias Duarte VP design, on the look:

What is pixels had not just color, but depth? What is they can change shape in response to touch? "Material design," says Duarte, is the new watchword. A material that can change shape physically is difficult; but now UI elements can use specified depth elements, and the Android framework will do things like apply virtual light sources to give the elements evident placement.

• Typography Introduces font consistency -- using the font "robot" -- so you can use the same one on all hardware (he mentions watch, TV, tablet
• Rich, animated touch feedback.
• Animated icons for printer, play, etc.
• In L, developers can create "seamless animation from any screen to any other, between activities, and even between apps."

• Introduces Polymer, which also brings the same features to desktop development.

• Unified set of style guidelines for developers and designers. First draft out today at google.com/design.

Update 3: Avni Shah on Mobile web experience

• Chrome on Mobile 27m last year, now 300m -- 10x growth
• "Material design" again; physical-ish card-based searching: search results smoothly animate, include intelligent suggestions.
• redesigned recents -- "Recent" list integrates both apps and Chrome tabs
• Search improvements: Searching integrates recent use of apps and tabs, too: opening Yelp or OpenTable can drag in a recent searches, so for instance a search for a restaurant in your recent history will take you instantly to a restaurant if you open a restaurant-related app.
• app indexing

Update 4: Dave Burke, on the features:

The short view:

• New material theme
• Lockscreen notifications
• Prioritized notifications
• Head up notifications

ART, the new runtime in L

• supports mix of AOT, JIT, and Interpreted
• truly cows platform: ARM, x86, etc.

64-bit compatible:

• larger number registers
• newer instruction sets/li>
• increased addressable memory space/li>
• cross platform/li>

Graphics -- big upgrades in Android extension pack:

• tessellation
• geometry tools
• improved shaders
• Unreal engine running on NVIDIA-based tablet -- impressive rendering

Project Volta:

• improved battery instrument ion (battery historian -- lets you match)
• Battery Saver -- can extend us up to 90 minutes "witina typical day's use"

Other bits:

• Starting in Fall, you'll see high-end ("PC gaming performance in your packet") tablets shipping.
• Increased battery life.
• New garbage collector, memory allocator
• Tomorrow morning, L previews for Nexus devices, and SDK available to developers.

• Update 5:
  Pichai takes a dig :Custom keyboards, widgets -- those things happened in Android 4-5 years ago." Google Play Services ship every 4-6 weeks. Wants voice to be a major source of input:

• context aware

• voice enabled alls

• seamless
• emphasizes phone as the entry point, since users "always have their phone."

Update 6:

David Singleton: Dire Engineering, Android, on Android wearables:

• 3 months ago, Android Wear SDK introduced.
• both square and round screens supported
• sensors for information, and " to help you reach your fitness goals"
• Demonstrates "stream of cards" interface
• emphasizes the "material design" of this: rich touch-based interaction; long presses, wipes, etc. can give the small surface a lot of flexibility.
• voice reminders: "Remind me to check my mail when I get home" -- "home" is a recognized location, too.
• slight demo failure in showing voice input on Google Wear watch, but "moving on, that note *would* have been saved "
• from wrist, quick replies can be sent, calls can be rejected / sent to voice mail; phone an also be set to Do Not Disturb with a single swipe.Can be used to control devices around you, with voice controls
• ("play some music" to control enabled devices, with playback display on wrist.)
• heartbeat sensors
• turn by turn dirs on the wrist, from Google maps
• Full Android Wear SDk out today: most API from Android available here, which means you can do things like read the sensors etc. to make apps that run on the watch itself, as well as ones that connect as an interface to a phone or other device.
• Demo of Eat24 shows (and gets oddly huge applause) ordering and paying for pizza straight from a phone; guess this a pro-pizza crowd. Bigger applause when he says this runs on the watch itself,
• apps can be synched such that reading text on phone scrolls in on watch and vice versa
• big applause for claim that all the new watches are water resistant, so not risky to cook with them. (Food references again ;))
• Lyft app: "Call me a car" into watch, gets location from phone, calls a driver. Pretty slick.
• LG watch: available to order later today
• Samsung joining the Android War set (also available later today); Moto 360 -- "later this summer" draws uniform groans from crowd.

Update 7: Patrick Brady on bringing Android to the car

• intros Android Auto - connected apps and service s drivers want in the car
• Andy Brenner, product manager, shows how a phone connected to a car's display can integrate with the phone, while the apps all run on the phone.
• simplified display, just a few app icons, simple control surfaces
• Navigation, audio controls
• Google maps: in Auto, local search, suggestions, live traffic, turn-by-turn nav
• Completely voice enabled: Demo: "How late is the de Young museum open?" gets a spoken reply, to which "Navigate there" does what you'd hope it would -- starts navigation, with map.
• Voice enabled messaging
• Big applause line: "Today we're announcing the Google Auto SDK."
• More than 40 automakers signed up for Open Automotive alliance, first cars "before the end of this year."

Update 8: Dave Burke back for Android in the living room:

• introduces Android TV: "not a new platform: just same level of attention as tablets and phones have gotten:" one SDK for all form factors
• In L, Live TV -- gives way to integrate sources like HDMI.
• Press Home, it overlays over the live content. Not quite Apple TV remote, but nicely simplified options.
• Basically just needs a D-pad style input device; an Android watch, phone, etc, works for this. Surely there will be dedicated devices, too.
• Voice a big one, incl. for complex searches ""Oscar nominated movies of 2012"
• 10-foot view UI emphasis
• Gameplay through Android TV on "the biggest screen in your house."
• You can also use it like a Chromecast -- play phone / tablet through TV, stereo, etc.
• Says new lines from Sony, Sharp, Philips, will all run it; more from Acer, Asus, etc. later.
• Console style gaming.
• SDK: ADT one, available to debs through sign-up page.

Update 9: Rishi Chandra on Chromecast:

• Google Cast, as mentioned, coming to Google TV devices
• Lots of Google Cast Ready Apple's: went from just a few (like NetFlix) to many dozens. Any developer (iOS, ChromeOS, Android) can extend their app to the Google Cast world through SDK.
• Today, announcing new list of apps at Chromecast.com/app
• Easy authentication (opt-in feature, so you can control, though), no complicated hassle of adding a new user who wants to show you a quick home movie.
• When TVs not being watched? New "GoogleCast "ambient" experience background pictures, etc. (Pretty, but wouldn't it be nice to save the electricity, in most cases?) Some nice eye candy in form of curated, "safe" pictures though, and fun geographic-centric ones, too, drawn from Google Earth.
• Emphasis on Voice search
• All android devices can be attached / streamed through it

Update 10: Sundar Pichae back again to talk ChromeOS and Android for Work:

• Top 10 highest rated lap opts on Amazon: all chromebooks 6x growth this year in k-12 schools
• notices from phone can now show up on Chromebooks
• apps, too: This seems to be couched in "some apps," *but* for those apps (like Evernote), "everything just works." On the Chromebook as it is on the phone or tablet, forever and ever, amen.
• Flipboard, too.
• Profiles: lets you use corporate stuff, but with full separation of data, and high security.
• For developers, no modification of existing apps needed.
• Gives a nod to Samsung for developing Knox, says that work is now integrated with the Android ecosystem.
• In fall, a certified Android to work program.
• Announces Native office editing within Google Docs suite of editors -- works on MS Office docs directly (nice!) rather than converting to Google Docs as intermediary.

Update 11: Urs Hoelzle on Google Cloud platform

(Delayed by lunch lines and network downtime -- sorry)

• Compute - compute engine, app engine
• Storage - cloud storage, cloud SQL
• App Service - Big Query, Cloud endpoints
• No need for constructs of upfront purchase
• New cloud debugging features: Cloud save, Debugger, Trace, Monitoring (comes from Stackdriver, recent Google acquisition)
• Announces Cloud Dataflow: managed service for analyzing arbitrarily large datasets, either batch or in real time. Eric Schmidt demos with World Cup data.

[Note: Hoelzle interrupted by protester: "You all work for a totalitarian company that builds robots to kill people."]

Update 12: Elllie Powers: Project Manager for Google Play

• Her domain: how Google helps developers create, distribute (including searchability), and monetize apps
• making testing easier: Announces that "the appurify team is joining Google"; cross-platform cloud testing service
• Google fit platform preview - single set of APIs to manage apps, sensors on cross-platform devices, incl. wearables. This is coming "in a few weeks."

Update 13: And finally ...

Google IO has a tradition of giving out cool hardware to attendees; this year, the first thing announced is low-key by any standards, never mind the glare of the tablets, phones, etc. that have been handed out are previous IOs: called Cardboard, it's the result of one of the "20 percent" projects that Google employees are encouraged to take part in: A chunk of cardboard slightly wider and slightly thinner than a trade paperback can be folded and velcroed in place to create a pair of goggles, into which a smartphone can be inserted. Instant movie viewing environment for the airplane, if you don't mind feeling curious stares. It's no Occulus Rift; maybe it's best used as a stereoscope.

The real swag at I/O this year, though, is a smart watch, or rather two of them: Samsung and LG watches will be given out tomorrow to the several thousand attendees (one each), and later in the summer, Motorola's will be, too. (By post.) Interesting: there aren't that many modern computing devices with round interfaces. (Not zero, but not many.)

Their main claim: "Sigsense Sensors are field-switchable sensing modules which replace the current generation of single purpose instruments. All Sigsense Sensors connect to the Sigsense Wireless Dock through a common interface. This portability and convenience allows workers to always carry the right instrument for the job." In other words, a technician in a food manufacturing plant doesn't need to carry a humidity-measuring tool, a multimeter, a signal strength meter, and four or five other measuring tools, to the point where he's got a backpack full of instrumentation or a rolling a cart full of measuring devices. That technician can now (in theory) carry a single, wireless sensor body, and put the sensors he needs on it as easily as you change heads on an electric hair trimmer. Check their blurb on AngelList for more about what this company is up to, and note that they are going way beyond making one measurement at a time. They're talking about collecting instrument data, along with tracking technicians, and sending all this data to the cloud, where you can do with it as you wish. But not today. The website says they will have products available "soon." (Alternate Video Link)

An anonymous reader sends this report from Ars Technica: The Federal Aviation Administration has said that online shopping powerhouse Amazon may not employ drones to deliver packages, at least not anytime soon. The revelation was buried in an FAA document (PDF) unveiled Monday seeking public comment on its policy on drones, or what the agency calls "model aircraft." The FAA has maintained since at least 2007 that the commercial operation of drones is illegal. ... In Monday's announcement, published in the Federal Register, the FAA named Amazon's December proposal as an example of what is barred under regulations that allow the use of drones for hobby and recreational purposes. The agency did not mention Amazon Prime Air by name, but it didn't have to. Under a graphic that says what is barred, the FAA mentioned the "Delivering of packages to people for a fee." A footnote added, "If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose."

A couple months ago, we discussed a new phone app being used in San Francisco to auction off parking spaces to the highest bidder. The city has now ordered the app makers to cease and desist, and threatened motorists with a $300 fine for each transaction. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work -- and Monkey Parking is not one of them. It's illegal, it puts drivers on the hook for $300 fines, and it creates a predatory private market for public parking spaces that San Franciscans will not tolerate. Worst of all, it encourages drivers to use their mobile devices unsafely — to engage in online bidding wars while driving. People are free to rent out their own private driveways and garage spaces should they choose to do so. But we will not abide businesses that hold hostage on-street public parking spots for their own private profit.

"Otherlab," says their projects page, "is a private Research and Development company with a number of core competencies. We welcome industrial partnerships and commercialization partners. We have worked with dozens of companies globally from small start-ups to multi-nationals and Fortune 500 businesses. We develop enabling new technologies through an emphasis on prototyping coupled to rigorous physics simulation and mathematical models. We develop our own design tools because it's lonely at the frontier and to create new things and ideas, you often have to create the tools to design them." | One of their projects is building low-cost, inflatable exoskeletons that can be used as prosthetics or -- one presumes -- as strength multipliers for people who have working limbs. This is the project today's interviewee, Tim Swift, is working on. (Alternate Video Link)

samzenpus (5) writes "Lawrence Lessig's list of achievements and areas of influence is not small. He's co-founder of the Creative Commons, but it is his Mayday PAC however that has garnered the most attention recently. The crowdfunded "Super PAC to end all Super PACs" was launched in May with the goal of raising money to elect candidates who would pass campaign finance reform. It raised over $1 million in the first 13 days and has the support of some influential people. With the help of matching contributions, Mayday hopes to raise $12 million by the end of June. Lessig has agreed to answer any questions about the PAC that you might have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post."

samzenpus (5) writes "Lawrence Lessig's list of achievements and areas of influence is not small. He's co-founder of the Creative Commons, but it is his Mayday PAC however that has garnered the most attention recently. The crowdfunded "Super PAC to end all Super PACs" was launched in May with the goal of raising money to elect candidates who would pass campaign finance reform. It raised over $1 million in the first 13 days and has the support of some influential people. With the help of matching contributions, Mayday hopes to raise $12 million by the end of June. Lessig has agreed to answer any questions about the PAC that you might have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post."

An anonymous reader writes A few months ago researchers announced they had discovered proof of the big bang. Now they're not so sure. Further research suggests cosmic dust might have skewed the results. "Back in March, the BICEP2 team reported a twisted pattern in the sky, which they attributed to primordial gravitational waves, wrinkles in the fabric of the universe that could have been produced when the baby universe went through an enormous growth spurt. If correct, this would confirm the theory of inflation, which says that the universe expanded exponentially in the first slivers of a second after the big bang – many believe that it continues to expand into an ever-growing multiverse. Doubts about the announcement soon emerged. The BICEP2 team identified the waves based on how they twisted, or polarised, the photons in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the earliest light emitted in the universe around 380,000 years after the big bang. Other objects, such as the ashes of exploding stars or dust within our galaxy, can polarise light as well."

theodp writes: "What if learning to code weren't actually the most important thing?" asks Mother Jones' Tasneem Raja. "Rather than increasing the number of kids who can crank out thousands of lines of JavaScript, we first need to boost the number who understand what code can do." Computational thinking, Raja explains, is what really matters. So, while Google is spending another $50 million (on top of an earlier $40 million) and pulling out all the stops in an effort to convince girls that code and AP Computer Science is a big deal, could AP Statistics actually be a better way to teach computational thinking to college credit-seeking high school students? Not only did AP Statistics enrollment surge as AP CS flat-lined, it was embraced equally by girls and boys. Statistics also offers plenty of coding opportunities to boot. And it teaches one how to correctly analyze AP CS enrollment data!

retroworks writes: The Guardian uses a stock photo of obvious electronic junk in its coverage of the sentencing of Joseph Benson of BJ Electronics. But film of the actual containers showed fairly uniform, sorted televisions which typically work for 20 years. In 2013, the Basel Convention Secretariat released findings on a two-year study of the seized sea containers containing the alleged "e-waste," including Benson's in Nigeria, and found 91% of the devices were working or repairable. The study, covered by Slashdot in Feb. 2013, declared the shipments legal, and further reported that they were more likely to work than new product sent to Africa (which may be shelf returns from bad lots, part of the reason Africans prefer used TVs from nations with strong warranty laws).

Director of regulated industry Harvey Bradshaw of the U.K. tells the Guardian: "This sentence is a landmark ruling because it's the first time anyone has been sent to prison for illegal waste exports." But five separate university research projects question what the crime was, and whether prohibition in trade is really the best way to reduce the percentage of bad product (less than 100% waste). Admittedly, I have been following this case from the beginning and interviewed both Benson and the Basel Secretariat Executive Director, and am shocked that the U.K. judge went ahead with the sentencing following the publication of the E-Waste Assessment Study last year. But what do Slashdotters think about the campaign to arrest African geeks who pay 10 times the value of scrap for used products replaced in rich nations?

An anonymous reader sends word that BlackBerry, hit hard over the past several years by the emergence of smart phones, has come back to profitability. BlackBerry has been fighting an uphill battle to stay relevant in the world of mobile devices. It has lost market share to Apple, companies like Samsung that offer gadgets running on Google's Android operating system, and Microsoft. But John Chen, who took over as CEO in November, has injected new life to the company. Chen, who says BlackBerry is getting close to breaking even on its hardware business, has steered the company's focus more towards software. He's made several product announcements that Wall Street has cheered. Last month, the company launched its Project Ion, an initiative to develop more connected devices ... a trend dubbed the Internet of Things. On Wednesday, BlackBerry reached a deal with Amazon that will let users of BlackBerry's newest operating system access Android apps in Amazon's appstore later this fall.

rtoz writes: The popular home monitoring camera startup "Dropcam" will be acquired by Nest Labs, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors. The deal is worth $555 million in cash. Nest itself was purchased by Google just four months ago for $3.2 billion. Dropcam is a cloud-based, Wi-Fi video monitoring service, founded in 2009. It lets users place cameras throughout a home for live-viewing and recording. The cameras also include options for night vision and two-way talking with built-in microphones. Dropcam has never disclosed sales, but it is routinely the top-selling security camera on Amazon, and it recently branched into selling in retail stores like Apple and Best Buy. People concerned about the privacy implications of Google's acquisition of Nest may be further unsettled by Nest's purchase of a home surveillance company. Nest's founder Matt Rogers anticipated this issue, and insisted that there's no reason to worry. In his blog post, he says that data won't be shared with anyone, including Google, without a customer's permission. Nest has run into product challenges recently.

An anonymous reader writes Two months after OpenBSD's LibReSSL was announced, Adam Langley introduces Google's own fork of OpenSSL, called BoringSSL. "[As] Android, Chrome and other products have started to need some subset of these [OpenSSL] patches, things have grown very complex. The effort involved in keeping all these patches (and there are more than 70 at the moment) straight across multiple code bases is getting to be too much. So we're switching models to one where we import changes from OpenSSL rather than rebasing on top of them. The result of that will start to appear in the Chromium repository soon and, over time, we hope to use it in Android and internally too." First reactions are generally positive. Theo de Raadt comments, "Choice is good!!."

An anonymous reader writes We had some good news yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated a software patent for failing to turn an idea into an invention. Unfortunately, the justices weren't willing to make any broader statements about the patentability of basic software tools, so the patent fights will continue. Timothy B. Lee at Vox argues that this is because the Supreme Court does not understand software, and says we won't see significant reform until they do.

He says, "If a sequence of conventional mathematical operations isn't patentable, then no software should enjoy patent protection. For example, the 'data compression' patents that Justice Kennedy wants to preserve simply claim formulas for converting information from one digital format to another. If that's not a mathematical algorithm, nothing is. This is the fundamental confusion at the heart of America's software patent jurisprudence: many judges seem to believe that mathematical algorithms shouldn't be patented but that certain kinds of software should be patentable. ... If a patent claims a mathematical formula simple enough for a judge to understand how it works, she is likely to recognize that the patent claims a mathematical formula and invalidate it. But if the formula is too complex for her to understand, then she concludes that it's something more than a mathematical algorithm and uphold it."

Modular Science is something Tim Lord spotted at last month's O'Reilly Solid Conference in San Francisco. Its founder, Peter Sand, has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT. He's scheduled to speak at this year's OSCON, and his speaker blurb for that conference says, "He is the founder of ManyLabs, a nonprofit focused on teaching math and science using sensors and simulations. Peter also founded Modular Science, a company working on hardware and software tools for science labs. He has given talks at Science Hack Day, Launch Edu, and multiple academic conferences, including SIGGRAPH." And now he's also been interviewed on Slashdot. Note that there are plenty of lab automation systems out there. Peter is working on one that is not only "an order of magnitude cheaper" than similar devices, but is also easy to modify and expand. It's the sort of system that would fit well not just in a college-level lab, but in a high school lab or a local makerspace. (Alternate Video Link)

Funksaw writes: Steve Wozniak, co-found of Apple Computer, has come out to endorse Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY PAC in an animated audio recording. Mayday.US, (formerly MayOne.US) is Lessig's crowd-funded (citizen-funded!), kick-started Super PAC to end all Super PACs. In the video, Wozniak points out that we're never going to get anywhere on issues important to the Internet community and technology advocates if we don't fix the root cause of corruption. The video can be found at the Mayday PAC's new landing page, "theInternetHasASuperPAC.com."

itwbennett writes: "A proposed $324.5 million settlement of claims that Silicon Valley companies (Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel) suppressed worker wages by agreeing not to hire each others' employees may not be high enough, a judge signaled on Thursday. Judge Lucy Koh didn't say whether she would approve the settlement, but she did say in court that she was worried about whether that amount was fair to the roughly 64,000 technology workers represented in the case. Throughout Thursday's hearing, she questioned not just the amount but the logic behind the settlement as presented by lawyers for both the plaintiffs and the defendants."

theodp writes: On Thursday, Google announced a $50 million initiative to inspire girls to code called Made with Code. As part of the initiative, Google said it will also be "rewarding teachers who support girls who take CS courses on Codecademy or Khan Academy." The rewards are similar to earlier coding and STEM programs run by Code.org and Google that offered lower funding or no funding at all to teachers if participation by female students was deemed unacceptable to the sponsoring organizations. The announcement is all the more intriguing in light of a Google job posting seeking a K-12 Computer Science Education Outreach Program Manager to "work closely with external leaders and company executives to influence activities that drive toward collaborative efforts to achieve major 'moonshots' in education on a global scale." Perhaps towards that end, Google recently hired the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), who was coincidentally also a Code.org Advisory Board member. And Code.org — itself a Made With Code grantee — recently managed to lure away the ACM's Director of Public Policy to be its COO. So, are these kinds of private-public K-12 CS education initiatives (and associated NSF studies) a good idea? Some of the nation's leading CS educators sure seem to think so (video).

Lucas123 writes: Katherine, a 14-foot, 2,300lb. Great White Shark, has become so popular with visitors to a research site tracking her daily movements that the site's servers have crashed and remained down for hours. The shark, one of dozens tagged for research by the non-profit global shark tracking project OCEARCH, typically cruises very close to shore up and down the Eastern Seaboard. That has attracted a lot interest from the swimming public. Currently, however, she's heading from Florida's west coast toward Texas. OCEARCH tags sharks with four different technologies to create a three-dimensional image of a shark's activities. "On average, we're collecting 100 data points every second — 8.5 million data points per day."

Two gyros under the seat keep this vehicle standing up at a stop, which is easier on the driver's legs than putting a foot down the way you do while riding most motorcycles. And no vroom-vroom sound, either. This is an electric motorcycle. The prototype you see in the video gets up to around 20 MPH, but production models are supposed to hit 100 MPH, and go as far as a Tesla S on 1/6 the juice. So little tiny batteries are all the Lit C-1 needs to drive (up to) 200 miles with the gyros spinning merrily away -- keeping the C-1 upright even in crashes, as a simulation in this Lit Motors YouTube video shows. They claim to have more than 200 pre-orders against a projected retail price of $24,000, which is not shabby for a company that hasn't made a single production vehicle so far. (Alternate Video Link)

Steve Delaire is making a 3-D printer that uses steel instead of plastic. Specifically, he's using TIG welding to build up layers of steel, just as most 3-D printers build up layers of plastic. He says he's "still working it out," but eventually hopes to use 3-D welding to make larger than life art pieces that are strong enough to be placed safely in public areas such as parks, where children are likely to climb on them. Steve's blog is called Molten3D, and it's a diary of his work, including the problems he encounters and how he overcomes them. He's not the only one doing metal 3-D printing; a Texas company has even made a printed metal gun. So there's plenty of people working in the field of what we really should call "additive manufacturing" instead of "3-D printing." But whatever you call it, every year we see this kind of process being used to make stronger and more complicated shapes, using an ever-increased variety of materials in ways that have been developed since this seminal paper, Liquid Metal Jetting for Printing Metal Parts, was written in 1997. (Alternate Video Link)

Graculus (3653645) writes with this excerpt from the BBC: Codebreakers credited with shortening World War Two worked in Bletchley Park, in structures built to last only a few years. Now, following a painstaking restoration, they have been brought back to life and Wednesday's official opening marks a remarkable turnaround from top secrecy to world wide attraction. With no photographs of the insides to work with, Bletchley Park looked to its most valuable resource — the veterans who worked there. A museum at the site has already been opened. The structures were once perilously close to being lost forever (until Google stepped in).

Graculus (3653645) writes with this excerpt from the BBC: Codebreakers credited with shortening World War Two worked in Bletchley Park, in structures built to last only a few years. Now, following a painstaking restoration, they have been brought back to life and Wednesday's official opening marks a remarkable turnaround from top secrecy to world wide attraction. With no photographs of the insides to work with, Bletchley Park looked to its most valuable resource — the veterans who worked there. A museum at the site has already been opened. The structures were once perilously close to being lost forever (until Google stepped in).

cartechboy (2660665) writes with news that Google is working on software to complete with Apple's CarPlay car dashboard software: Google is set to unveil its own automotive operating system known internally as Google Auto Link. The search giant plans to unveil its system at a software developer conference this month. Interestingly, Auto Link is the first production developed in conjunction with the Open Automotive Alliance, a group of companies including Audi, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, NVIDIA, and Google itself. Like CarPlay, Auto Link won't be an "embedded" system, rather, a "projected" one--an operating system that uses a driver's own smartphone operating system. We'll obviously learn details soon enough, but for now, we are left to wonder whether it'll be Apple or Google that ends up owning the automotive market.

jfruh (300774) writes with news that a complaint in Irish Court against Facebook for possibly sharing personal data of EU citizens with the NSA has escalated to the European Court of Justice which will review the continuance of the U.S./EU Safe Harbor Framework in light of PRISM. Under European laws, personal data of EU citizens can't be transferred to countries that don't meet EU standards for data protection. The U.S. doesn't meet those standards, but American companies have worked around this by using EU standards for the data of European citizens, even that data stored on servers outside of Europe. Now the EU's highest court will decide if this workaround is good enough — especially in light of revelations of the NSA's Prism data-mining program.

theodp (442580) writes Comparing Yahoo's diversity numbers to Google's, writes Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku, is "like comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges." Two weeks after Google disclosed it wasn't "where we want to be" with its 17% female and 1% Black U.S. tech workforce, Yahoo revealed its diversity numbers aren't that much better than Google's, with a U.S. tech workforce that's 35% female and 1% Black. The charts released by Yahoo indicate women fare worse in its global tech workforce, only 15% of which is female. So, with Google and Yahoo having checked in, isn't it about time for U.S. workforce expert Mark Zuckerberg and company to stop taking the Fifth and ante up numbers to show students what kind of opportunities Facebook offers?

theodp (442580) writes Comparing Yahoo's diversity numbers to Google's, writes Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku, is "like comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges." Two weeks after Google disclosed it wasn't "where we want to be" with its 17% female and 1% Black U.S. tech workforce, Yahoo revealed its diversity numbers aren't that much better than Google's, with a U.S. tech workforce that's 35% female and 1% Black. The charts released by Yahoo indicate women fare worse in its global tech workforce, only 15% of which is female. So, with Google and Yahoo having checked in, isn't it about time for U.S. workforce expert Mark Zuckerberg and company to stop taking the Fifth and ante up numbers to show students what kind of opportunities Facebook offers?

phrackthat writes with an update to Friday's news that the IRS cannot locate two years worth of email from Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy surrounding the IRS's apparent targeting of Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. Now, the IRS says there are another six workers for whom the agency cannot locate emails. As with Lerner, they attribute the unrecoverable emails to computer crashes. Among them was Nikole Flax, who was chief of staff to Lerner’s boss, then-deputy commissioner Steven Miller. Miller later became acting IRS commissioner, but was forced to resign last year after the agency acknowledged that agents had improperly scrutinized tea party and other conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status. Documents have shown some liberal groups were also flagged. ... Lerner’s computer crashed in the summer of 2011, depriving investigators of many of her prior emails. Flax’s computer crashed in December 2011, Camp and Boustany said. The IRS said Friday that technicians went to great lengths trying to recover data from Lerner’s computer in 2011. In emails provided by the IRS, technicians said they sent the computer to a forensic lab run by the agency’s criminal investigations unit. But to no avail.

Mike Matter was showing off his edgertronic (named after Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton) high speed video camera at O'Reilly's inaugural Solid conference, when Tim Lord happened by his little show booth and started interviewing Mike with his normal speed camcorder. While Tim's camcorder shoots 720p at 30 or 60 frames per second, the edgertronic video camera shoots 720P at 700 frames per second, and can shoot lesser resolutions at up to 18,000 frames per second. But the big breakthrough here isn't performance. It's price. Most high-speed video cameras cost $20,000 to $50,000 (or even more), while Mike's edgertronic starts at a mere $5,495.00. This is still a little steep for hobby photographers, but is not bad for a tool used by professionals. And Kickstarter? You bet! Last year Mike raised $170,175, which was much more than his $97,900 goal. Now he's busy making and shipping cameras, working so many hours that he doesn't have time for his own photography. But sometimes that's the way life goes, and Mike seems to be handling it well. (Alternate Video Link)