Month: October 2018

Google’s Pixel 2 introduced one of the best smartphone cameras ever made and the Pixel 3 brings even more more bells and whistles sure to please mobile photographers. On paper, the Pixel 3’s camera doesn’t look much different than its recent forebear, but because it’s Google, software is where the device will really shine. We’ll go over everything that’s new.

Starting with specs, both the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3 XL will sport a 12.2MP rear camera with an f/1.8 aperture and an 8MP dual front camera capable of both normal field of view and ultra-wide angle shots. The rear video camera captures 1080p video at 30, 60 or 120 fps, while the front-facing video camera is capable of capturing 1080p video at 30fps. Google did not add a second rear-facing camera, deeming it “unnecessary” given what the company can do with machine learning alone. Knowing how good the Pixel 2’s camera is, we can’t really argue here.

Top Shot

With the Pixel 3, Google introduced Top Shot. With Top Shot, the Pixel 3 compares a burst set of images taken in rapid succession and automatically detects the best shot using machine learning. The idea is that the camera can screen out any photos in which a subject might have their eyes closed or be making a weird face unintentionally, choosing “smiles instead of sneezes” and offering the user the best of the batch. Stuff like this is usually gimmicky, but given Google’s image processing prowess it’s honestly probably going to be pretty good. Or as TechCrunch’s Matt Burns puts it, “Top Shots is Live Photo but useful” which seems like a fair assessment.

Super Res Zoom

Google’s next Pixel 3 camera trick is called Super Res Zoom, which is what it sounds like. Super Res Zoom enables the camera to take a burst of photos and then leverages the fact that each image is very slightly different due to minute hand movements, combining those images together to recreate detail “without grain” — or so Google claims. Because smartphone cameras are limited due to their lack of optical zoom, Super Res Zoom employs burst shooting and a merging algorithm to compensate for detail at a distance, merging slightly different photos into one higher resolution photo. Because digital zoom is notoriously universally bad, we’re looking forward to putting this new method to the test. After all, if it worked for Mars, it’s bound to work for concert photos.

Night Sight

A machine learning camera hack designed to inspire people to retire flash once and for all (please), Night Sight can visualize a photo taken in “extreme low light.” The idea is that machine learning can make educated guesses about the content in the frame, filling in detail and color correcting so it isn’t just one big noisy mess. If it works remains to be seen but given the Pixel 2’s already stunning low light performance we’d bet this is probably pretty cool.

Group Selfie Cam

Google knows what the people really want. One of the biggest hardware changes to the Pixel 3 line is the introduction of dual front-facing cameras that enable super-wide front-facing shots capable of capturing group photos. The wide angle front-facing shots feature a 97 degree field of view compared to the normal already fairly wide 75 degree field of view. Yes, Google is trying to make “Groupies” a thing — yes, that’s a selfie where you all cram in and hand the phone to the friend with the longest arms. Honestly, it might succeed.

Google has a few more handy tricks up its sleeve. In Photobooth mode, the Pixel 3 can snap the selfie shutter when you smile, no hands needed. With a new kind of motion tracking auto-focus option you can tap once to track the subject of a photo without needing to tap to refocus, a feature sure to be handy for the kind of people that fill up their storage with hundreds of out of focus pet shots.

Google Lens is also back, of course, but honestly we’ve never met anyone who uses it. And Google’s AR stickers are now called Playground and respond to actions and facial expressions. Google is also launching a Childish Gambino AR experience on Playground (probably as good as this whole AR sticker thing gets, tbh) which will launch with the Pixel 3 and come to the Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 a bit later on.

With the Pixel 3, Google will also improve upon the Pixel 2’s already excellent Portrait Mode, offering the ability to change the depth of field and the subject. And of course the company will still offer free unlimited full resolution photo storage in the wonderfully useful Google Photos, which remains superior to every aspect of photo processing and storage on the iPhone.

Happily, because much of what Google accomplishes in mobile photography is achieved on the software processing side, the last generation Pixel 2 isn’t getting left in the dust, either. Because they don’t rely on new hardware, most of the features that Google announced today for the Pixel 3 will likely be hitting the Pixel 2 as well, though we’ll sort that out and update this post to specify when that is not the case. So far, we know Group Selfies relies on the dual front camera, so that’s Pixel 3 only.

With its Pixel line, now three generations deep, Google has leaned heavily on software-powered tricks and machine learning to make a smartphone camera far better than it should be. Given Google’s image processing chops, that’s a great thing and most of its experimental software workarounds generally works very well. We’re looking forward to taking its latest set of photography tricks for a spin, so keep an eye out for our upcoming Pixel 3 hands-on posts and reviews.

Try before you buy is the new name of the game. With items costing upwards of $100, people want to know what they’re getting themselves into before they commit to a costly gizmo — at least that’s what Google is betting on right now. Aligned with Google’s Made by Google event, the company is partnering with startup b8ta to create an interactive experience around its products.

These experiences are live at seven of b8ta’s flagship locations, which enable people to try out new tech products. Each demo experience is modeled after the different rooms of a home — living room, kitchen, home office and so on.

“We’re excited that Made by Google products are now available in the majority of b8ta locations across the country,” Google Director of Retail Marketing Janell Fischer said in a statement. “We’re always looking to make it easier for customers to try and shop our products, and this is a great example of that coming to life.”

It’s been a big year for b8ta. In April, the startup unveiled a Shopify-like solution for retailers called Built by b8ta, with Netgear as one of its first customers. Then, in June, Macy’s partnered with b8ta to enhance its experiential-based retail concept and went on to lead the startup’s $19 million Series B round.

Lyft has hired Anthony Foxx, who served as President Barack Obama’s transportation secretary from 2013 to 2017, to lead its policy efforts, Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer first reported. Foxx, who was formerly the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, is officially the chief policy officer and senior advisor to Lyft’s founders, Lyft President John Zimmer and Lyft CEO Logan Green.

In a Medium post, Foxx outlined why he’s joining Lyft. Here’s a snippet:

Transformations can happen quickly. Some take time. With so much talk about the growth of cities, the internet of things, the role of regulation in an era of rapid technological change, rising congestion and the need to open the doors of opportunity wider to all segments of the population, change is needed. I have spent much of my public life putting the building blocks in place for that transformation to occur. I see a future in which we get places safer, faster, smarter, cleaner and more connected to opportunity — and each other — than ever before. This future is within our grasp but it will not happen on its own. It will be the product of business and government working together. Because I believe the team at Lyft is best positioned to drive us in the right direction, I am proud to announce that I am joining their team today as Chief Policy Officer and Senior Advisor to the President and CEO.

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 29: U.S. President Barack Obama (R) listens as Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx speaks after announcing him as his nominee for Secretary of Transportation at the White House April 29, 2013 in Washington, DC. Foxx is the first Democrat elected as the Mayor of Charlotte in over 22 years and would be replacing outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Last month, Lyft hit one billion rides shortly after the company made its official entrance into the scooter sharing space when it launched electric scooters in Denver, Colo. Lyft has since deployed its scooters in Santa Monica, Calif. as part of the city’s pilot program. Lyft’s entrance into scooters came close after its acquisition of bike-share company Motivate.

Lyft’s entrance into additional modalities means a new, complex regulatory space. Cities are actively grappling with how they want to regulate bike-share and electric scooter sharing. In San Francisco, Lyft is reportedly battling the city to get its scooters on the streets after the city’s transportation department decided to grant permits only to Skip and Scoot. Perhaps having Foxx, who says he has “made decisions on issues affecting mobility — everything from zoning and land use, to capital budgeting, to street resurfacing, to transit,” on board can help.

You can check out Foxx’s full Medium post here.

Google’s next-generation Chromecast device launched today – something that came as no surprise, given that Best Buy accidentally sold one to an in-store customer last month. The new streaming dongle doesn’t represent a significant update from the prior version. It’s still a round puck attached to a cable and costs $35, but now it supports faster, 5 GHz 802.11ac Wi-Fi, as had been expected.

The company chose not to focus on the Chromecast at its hardware event this morning, instead simply launching the updated device on the Google Store alongside the event itself.

The new device now sports a Google logo on the center of the puck, instead of the Chrome logo found on the 2015 model, which first introduced the round form factor. That change was meant to help better accommodate Chromecast’s new internals and make it easier to plug into TVs, Google had said.

The third-generation Chromecast also features support for up to 1080p resolution up to 60fps, and plugs into TVs via the HDMI port, as before. It continues to have a micro-USB power connector. And it still doesn’t work with a remote – you use your phone for that through.

Chromecast’s companion app, Google Home, lets users set up and control their Chromecast, Google Home devices, and Google Assistant speakers. This was also given a redesign today with more of a focus on controlling the smart home.

The Chromecast still comes in two versions – this new, 3rd generation device and the 4K-ready Chromecast Ultra, which is $69.

But for just a little more than the $35 basic Chromecast, you can now buy a $40 4K-ready Roku Premiere or a $50 Fire TV Stick 4K. Perhaps Google is waiting for a bigger refresh to its Chromecast product line that makes its devices more competitive, before making any formal announcements here.

The third-gen Chromecast comes in Chalk and Charcoal, and is 51.8mm long and 13.8mm wide. That’s about the same as the second-gen, at 51.9 x 51.9 x 13.49 mm.

The Chromecast, like much of what Google announced today, wasn’t kept under wraps very well ahead of this event. In addition to the Best Buy sale last month (which another person reported, too), a U.K. retailer also sold the new Chromecast this morning for £29.99, according to reports.

“So you think you know,” Google teased via Twitter in the lead up today’s event. “Tune in tomorrow to see for yourself.” Turns out we were right. We basically knew everything there was to know in the lead up to today’s event, Pixel 3 and otherwise. Honestly there wasn’t really a heck of a lot to keep under wraps here.

At first blush, the Pixel 3 doesn’t feel like a monumental upgrade from its predecessor — a sentiment we had just about this time last year when the company introduced the Pixel 2. For some time now, Google’s insisted that the future of hardware would largely come courtesy of the software things — it’s precisely the sort of sentiment one would expect from a software company like Google.

That’s certainly at play here. Google spent little time talking about the hardware on either of the new handsets, instead focusing on what things like AI and ML can bring to the table on a product like this. Keep in mind, while Google quickly established itself as a premium smartphone maker, Pixel products are what they’ve always been: a showcase for all of the things Android can do in the most ideal conditions.

The new handsets don’t look radically different from the Pixel 2 — in fact, the casual observe would have some trouble distinguishing the two products at first glance. Once again, Google’s devices aren’t the slickest pieces of hardware — that title would likely either go to Apple or Samsung, depending on personal preference.

And as for the Pixel XL — the damn thing is downright massive, really earning its name this time out. Those 6.3 inches truly feel like 6.3 inches. As such, the larger device isn’t for the small of hand or limited of pocket. As initially reported, the larger Pixel has quite the notch this time, in keeping with Google’s embrace of the feature on the latest version of Android.

This is thanks, in no small part to the addition of a second front-facing camera. That brings much wider angle selfie shots to the table — Google fitting spent a fair bit of time talking selfies at today’s event. Welcome to 2018, I guess. It’s a curious choice, given the fact that the company bucked the trend by keeping a single rear-facing lens.

Again, the majority of the the camera features here actually come courtesy of Google’s own artificial intelligence and machine learning, which puts the device in a similar spot as the iPhone XS. The company really rattled through the camera features at the end of the presentation, but the super low light shots and zoom features are standouts I can wait to put through the ringer when we get our review units in the very near future.

I’ll admit that the squeeze for Assistant feature has really grown on me since the days HTC launched it on its own device. Certainly it trump something like Samsung’s devoted Bixby button — and not just because people actually use Google Assistant. It’s clear Assistant is only going to become more and more integral as the company moves forward.

The price is really the thing here. That’s sort of the unspoken truth in all of this. There was a time, not too long ago when $1,000 sounded like an insane amount to pay for a flagship smartphone. Of course, both Apple and Samsung have changed that math considerably, and Google is undercutting the companies at every turn possible.

Sure, $799 and $899 for the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL aren’t exactly cheap, but in the age of the $1,000 flagship, it sounds like a downright deal.

Spinnaker is an open source continuous delivery (CD) platform from Netflix and Google, though it now also has the backing of other major software companies. Spinnaker 1.0 launched last July, so it’s not the newest kid on the block, but the service is slowly but surely gaining momentum now, with users that include Target, Adobe, Daimler and Capital One, as well as a growing ecosystem of vendors who support it.

Today, after a few years of working on the project without any formal structure in place, the Spinnaker project announced that it is growing up and putting a formal governance system in place at the project’s second community summit in Seattle this week.

Like Kubernetes, which has become the de facto standard for container orchestration tools, Spinnaker could become the same kind of standard for continuous delivery. That space, though, already has plenty of incumbents and established players, so chances are this will be a bit more of an uphill battle. Spinnaker and Kubernetes make for a pretty obvious pairing, though, so there’s now also plenty of Kubernetes startups that are looking at how they can best combine the two.

What’s most important in the short run, though, is that Spinnaker is now getting a formal governance structure whereas before, it was basically run as a GitHub project with a benevolent dictator in place.

“That’s something that the community’s been looking for in terms of how do people get a seat at the table,” Netflix’s Director of Delivery Engineering Andy Glover, who oversaw the development of Spinnaker, told me. “The project has largely been run by Netflix and Google. We’ve taken any questions from the community and big companies, whether they be Cisco or Target, about trying to figure out ‘what’s the deal here?’ How do we how do we reduce risk, how do we guard ourselves from Netflix closed-sourcing it or Google’s deciding to license it or something like that.”

So going forward, the project will have a technical steering committee and a steering committee. For now, those committees are staffed with Netflix and Google engineers, but the plan is to open it up to third parties as well. The new governance policy also outlines how developers can start committing code to the project.

In the early days, having Glover and others shepherd the project informally was just fine. Now that the community is growing, though, and more large companies are starting to use Spinnaker, Glover admits that to scale the project, others have to step in. “At Netflix, we tend to do a lot of experimentation without worrying too much up front,” he told me. “Let’s just run fast and see what happens. And with respect to Spinnaker, that was very much run the same way. We said we’d cross that bridge when we get to it and obviously, we got to that bridge a little while ago.”

One thing a lot of people have been wondering about is whether Spinnaker will eventually land at any of the major open source foundations like the Linux Foundation, the OpenStack Foundation or the Apache Foundation. Glover noted that this move is meant to set the stage for that.

Boris Renski, the founder of Mirants, which has recently made a major bet on Spinnaker, tells me that this new governance policy is very much needed (and he’d prefer the project to land with the OpenStack Foundation). He told me that today’s Spinnaker, without formal governance in place, isn’t always the most community-friendly place to be.

“Spinnaker has all the chances to become the de facto continuous delivery tool,” he told me. Putting the governance in place is only a first step, though, Renski actually believes that one of the challenges for the project is the fact that Kubernetes is already putting many of the CD tools for its community in place. Kubernetes, he argues, is suffering from “an OpenStack syndrome” where it has “its fingers in everything” (though to be fair, OpenStack has paired its efforts back quite a bit in recent years). That, he thinks, is not a healthy dynamic and he believes that more specialized tools are the way to go. But Kubernetes is the hot new thing right now and developers are gravitating to it. Yet CD solutions that only cater to Kubernetes discount that most enterprises will want to be able to deploy to other targets, too. Spinnaker, he argues, should be a friend to Kubernetes developers but still remain flexible enough to work for everybody.

He also noted that one problem with today’s Spinnaker community is that it’s mostly driven by users who are trying to solve a near-term tactical problem. “Those users don’t have time and bandwidth to solve longer-term, community-type problems,” he said. What the project still needs in his view is real “pluggability,” that is, the ability to extend Spinnaker and more easily integrate it with third-party systems.

Google, Microsoft and Amazon now back the project and it runs on their clouds. Pivotal, too, recently announced increased support for it and so are many other players in the continuous integration and delivery ecosystem. Pete Erickson, who organized this week’s Spinnaker Summit, told me that he’s expecting about 400 participants from 16 countries and 275 companies at the event. And Glover also noted that about 30 percent of attendees are new to Spinnaker and are simply attending to learn about it and how to bring it to their companies.

At a special event in New York City, Google announced some of its latest, flagship hardware devices. During the hour-long press conference Google executives and product managers took the wraps off the company’s latest products and explained their features. Chief among the lot is the Pixel 3, Google’s latest flagship Android device. Like the Pixel 2 before it, the Pixel 3’s main feature is its stellar camera but there’s a lot more magic packed inside the svelte frame.

Pixel 3

Contrary to some earlier renders, the third version of Google’s Android flagship (spotted by 9 to 5 Google) does boast a sizable notch up top, in keeping with earlier images of the larger XL. Makes sense, after all, Google went out of its way to boast about notch functionality when it introduced Pie, the latest version of its mobile OS.

The device is available for preorder today and will start shipping October 18, starting at $799. The larger XL starts at $899, still putting the product at less than the latest flagships from Apple and Samsung.

Pixel Slate

The device looks pretty much exactly like the leaks lead us to believe — it’s a premium slate with a keyboard cover that doubles as a stand. It also features a touch pad, which gives it the edge over products like Samsung’s most recent Galaxy Tab. There’s also a matching Google Pen, which appears to more or less be the same product announced around the Pixel Book, albeit with a darker paint job to match the new product.

The product starts at $599, plus $199 for the keyboard and $99 for the new dark Pen. All three are shipping at some point later this year.

Home Hub

The device looks like an Android tablet mounted on top of a speaker — which ought to address the backward firing sound, which is one of the largest design flaws of the recently introduced Echo Show 2. The speaker fabric comes in a number of different colors, in keeping with the rest of the Pixel/Home products, including the new Aqua.

When not in use, the product doubles as a smart picture frame, using albums from Google Photos. A new Live Albums, which auto updates, based on the people you choose. So you can, say, select your significant others and it will create a gallery based on that person. Sweet and also potentially creepy. Machine learning, meanwhile, will automatically filter out all of the lousy shots.

The Home Hub is up for pre-order today for a very reasonable $149. In fact, the device actually seems like a bit of a loss leader for the company in an attempt to hook people into the Google Assistant ecosystem. It will start shipping October 22.

Pixel Stand

The Pixel Stand is basically a sleek little round dock for your phone. While it can obviously charge your phone, what’s maybe more interesting is that when you put your phone into the cradle, it looks like it’ll start a new notifications view that’s not unlike what you’d see on a smart display. It costs $79.

Google Lens, the technology that combines the smartphone camera’s ability to see the world around you with A.I. technology, is coming to the Pixel 3 camera, Google announced this morning. That means you’ll be able to point your phone’s camera at something – like a movie poster to get local theater listings, or even look up at actor’s bio, or to translate a sign in another language – and see results right in the camera app itself.

The integration is thanks to Google’s investment in A.I. technologies, something that was the underlying tie to everything Google announced today at its hardware event.

Lens, in particular, was first shown off at Google I/O back in 2017, before rolling out to new products like Google Image Search just weeks ago. Now, it’s in the camera itself – the most obvious place for the technology.

With Lens, you can point your camera at a takeout menu, Google says, and it will highlight the number to call.

Another feature is centered around shopping. With a long press, you can have Lens identify a product the camera sees in the viewfinder, and have it match it to real products. This is called “Style Search,” Google says.

As Google explained at the event, you can point your Pixel 3 camera at a friend’s cool new pair of sunglasses or some shoes you like in a magazine, and Lens will point you to where you can find them online and browse similar styles. The feature is similar to Pinterest’s visual search, which has been available for some time.

Also of note, Lens will be able to take some of its more common actions instantly in the camera, without the need for a data connection.

Google says this is possible by combining Pixel’s visual core with its years of work in search and computer vision.

“Being able to search the world around you is the next logical step and organizing the world’s information and making it more useful for people,” said Brian Rakowski, VP Product Management at Google.

Google today announced that it’ll start rolling out Duplex, its controversial Google Assistant feature that can make phone calls on your behalf, to Pixel phones next month.

The rollout will be city by city and Google didn’t yet clarify what Duplex will be able to do at first.

The company first demoed Duplex at its I/O developer conference this spring. In the demo at I/O, the Assistant was able to reserve tables at restaurants and make appointments at salons. Chances are, that’s what Duplex will be able to do at launch, too.

At the time, the feature was controversial because the Assistant basically tried to fool respondents into believing that it was a real human being. That also opened up legal questions, given that the tool had to record the calls, yet it didn’t announce that it did so. Google later said that the Assistant would announce itself on all calls.

Duplex will first launch in New York, Atlanta, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area and should be available there by the end of the year.

As part of this morning’s official unveiling of the Pixel 3, Google also announced its larger sibling, the Pixel 3 XL.

The news wasn’t a surprise, given the photos that leaked months ago (something that Google itself acknowledged by kicking off the event with a little montage of videos responding to early details). And Engadget’s Richard Lai had already gotten his hands on the phone in Hong Kong.

But what hadn’t actual come out were the details from the company tiself. As the name implies, a bigger version of the Pixel 3 (which has a 5.5 inch screen), with a 6.30inch screen. Google’s Liza Ma said the company was working to create an “edge-to-edge viewing experience” with a better screen-to-body ratio than previous screens.

One of the big selling points emphasized in Google’s presentation is the camera, including the Top Shot capability, which captures a number of alternate images when you take a photo, so you’re less likely to be cursing your timing if it isn’t just right. Naturally, all of that will be included in the Pixel 3 XL as well, along with other new features like call screening.

Pricing for the Pixel 3 XL starts at $899 and will arrive in the United States on October 18.