Google : Project Glass

If you've ever envied the augmented reality vision featured in films like Terminator and Mission Impossible this might be just your thing.

Imagine seeing all the relevant information you need, not by looking at a device, but looking at the world around you. This is Google's vision of how augmented reality might work in a few years' time. The internet giant officially revealed what it's calling Project Glass, a see-through heads-up display that offers information triggered by the wearer's location or voice.

Google has unveiled augmented reality glasses that display a layer of information over everything the wearer sees through them.

The company's first venture into wearable computing, dubbed Project Glass, was demonstrated in a video and post written on Google+.

In the promotional video, titled One Day, a man sends messages to his friends, gets directions for his route and a built-in camera takes pictures along the way.

The post says: "A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment.

"We're sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input."

The post also contains some photos of people wearing the new eyewear.

The glasses are wrap-around and feature a small clear display that sits above one eye.

They are not on sale yet but Google employees will be testing prototypes in public.

Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ Review: It’s Tempting

If you consider where Android was when it started versus how far it's advanced in 18 months with Android 2.2, you might get brain freeze.

Android 2.2—aka Froyo—is the most usable, polished iteration of Android yet. But more importantly, it's the first release that makes Android truly compelling for a broad consumer audience. Froyo's updates aren'tthat radical, but serious under-the-hood improvements and refinements throughout make it tangibly more pleasing to use.

Need for Speed

Without getting overly technical, Android executes its apps in a layer above its core Linux OS in a virtual machine called Dalvik. One of the major under-the-hood changes in 2.2 is a just-in-time compiler for Dalvik, which—here come the chocolate sprinkles—results in a 2x–5x performance boost for CPU-heavy code. That means faster apps—faster everything. (Google demoed it last week with the game Replica Island, which kept a higher framerate while doing more stuff in 2.2 compared to its performance on Android 2.1)

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In everyday use, the new compiler combined with Android's efficient memory management means that pretty much everything you do, in both the general OS as well as apps, feels more responsive. The speed increase itself isn't staggering in and of itself, but the subconscious effects of a smoother, less draggy experience are real. The slowdowns and stutters I've come to just expect from Android (even with beefier processors) are mostly gone. And after a year-and-a-half of dealing with them, it's kind of remarkable to no longer rage at Android's persistent lagging.

According to Google, this speed boost incongruously comes with slightly better battery life. But any power improvements haven't been dramatic enough for us to notice during tests on the Nexus One.

The other place you'll subtly notice things are faster is web browsing. Again, Google's promising 2x faster JavaScript rendering speeds thanks to the new V8 engine, and this is actually a pretty solid estimate.

I compared a Nexus One with 2.1 to one running 2.2 (both on Wi-Fi). Here's what I saw on a handful of sites, some with Flash set to "on demand" (that's essentially "off"); some with with Flash turned on completely. Plus we threw the Flash-less iPad in for comparison. As you can see, the boosts are non-trivial—extra speed that adds up to a far happier browsing experience.

The biggest feature in the browser is that it now supports Adobe Flash, an optional download from the Android Market. That might be more blessing than curse. If you leave Flash turned on, the purpose it will most often serve is to render Flash ads. Fortunately, you have the option to make plugins for the Android browser available "on demand," so it works more like ClicktoFlash—you click when you want a piece of Flash to render. The version of Flash available now is "pre-beta" so it doesn't have common desktop features like hardware acceleration for h.264 video. It's also not exactly perfect at rendering stuff, as you can see comparing this Flash-based infographic on the phone versus desktop, which limits its utility, as least given the way I browse on a phone. (I'm not a Farmville player, and Hulu blocks Android 2.2.)

It's the Little Things

The speed boost in 2.2 is fantastic, but what makes Froyo a truly great update is that it tightens bolts all across the entire platform. Android has evolved into a real product, on a totally different level than its first year.

One of Android's major shortcomings has been its interface, which has varied from wildly inconsistent to simply confusing. The UI is largely the same—it's still more complex and less elegant than either the iPhone or Palm's webOS—but it's striking how much nicer it feels thanks to even a few tweaks.

• The messages app—for SMS and MMS—and Google Talk now share a mostly unified interface with the Gmail app: black-text-on-purpleish background, moving away from the incongruous white-text-on-black.

• Inside of Gmail, you can now quickly switch between accounts by tapping the name of the account in the top right hand corner.

• When you plug the phone into your computer and turn on USB storage, a fancy Android graphic now tells you what's up, with clear instructions about mounting and unmounting your phone.

• The camera app's controls are markedly improved, putting all of the settings like white balance and flash mode right up front, rather than sticking them behind a finicky slider that didn't work half the time.

• Usefully and enjoyable—and with maybe just a little poking at Apple—galleries now have a pinch-to-peek gesture, so that you can see what photos are inside of a gallery before you open it.

Perhaps my favorite tweaks are on the home screen.

• Since smartphones have been shedding buttons like promise rings on prom night, a new center widget on the home screen puts the dialer, app menu and browser permanently at your fingertips.

• Pressing and holding the central apps button brings up thumbnail previews of every screen on your desktop. Update: Originally, these preview tabs popped up only when you pressed and held the left/right desktop buttons—which I never used, since I always swiped from one desktop to another.

Lingering Issues

Android's still not all the way there. There are still too many buried features, hidden by menu button, and general complexities, like a separate email app for non-Gmail accounts, remain. Selecting text, while now possible in the Gmail app, is confusing. And the white-on-black interface for the dialer and contacts seems even more out of place now that messages and Gtalk use a lighter UI.

The interface could always stand to be sleeker and more graceful. It's so strange, in a way, that Android has the most impressive voice controls and speech-to-text of any phone out there, but basic things like copy-and-paste can feel as slippery as brain surgery on a snail. The problem extends to the Android Market. Sure, one day we might be pushing apps to the phone from our desktop, but app discoverability, particularly on the phone itself, is a long way from optimal.

But you can see where things are going. And it feels more unified and complete than it ever has, which is a good thing. (Except the touch keyboard. It still feels like you're typing with two fingers glued together, and Andy Rubin didn't offer us much hope on that front.)

The App Scene

Many other improvements involve apps. Like the Android Market, which finally has an "update all apps" button—or you can even allow apps to update themselves automatically, if you trust them.

Android now has a built-in, legit task manager, and while it's a little too deep in the settings, you can kill unruly apps that gobble memory. (Thankfully, I haven't had to do so in 2.2). You can move apps to the SD card, which is a big deal since you were previously limited to however many apps would fit within the puny internal storage in the phone. (This appears to be something developers have to allow, since only a couple of apps gave me the option to do so.)

And, while I haven't tested this (since I'm using the same phone and I don't think any apps support the API yet), apps can back up your data, so when you move to a new phone, all of your inner-app data will show up with the fresh install.

While it's not too much use to anyone on AT&T in NY or SF, perhaps the biggest new feature is the portable hotspot, which works as perfectly as you'd hope. Check the box, and you're sharing your 3G connection over Wi-Fi with any device you want. Security is limited to WPA2, unfortunately, making integration with older devices difficult. It also works while charging, so why even bother with tethering?

The official Twitter app is built-in, much like Facebook has been since Android 2.0, and it is deeply integrated with your contacts. The setup is automagical, though if it screws up the pairing—say if somebody's Twitter handle gets assigned to the wrong person—good luck fixing it. Still, the effect is charming, especially if a contact is as deeply tied into Google as you are, since every avenue by which you could possibly want to contact them is at your fingertips. (On the flip side, Google's contact management within Gmail is still pretty horrendous.)

Accounts are improved in a few ways. For me, the most important is that now you can see calendars from every Google account on the phone, whereas before only calendars from one primary account synced. But serious corporate users get some of the love too, since Exchange calendars work now as well. I didn't test any of the Exchange administrator features, like remote wipe, but I'll say being able to set a real alphanumeric passcode for the screenlock instead of a grease-trail-reside gesture sounds much, much improved.

Google's Good Stuff...That's Not In Froyo

Some of the most impressive stuff that Google showed off last week is still a ways off—features that we know are coming but won't make it into Froyo.

The current built-in music app is as clunky and ugly as ever, and managing music on the phone is not nearly as easy as it should be. But Google's Simply Media-powered streaming demo, which was demonstrated streaming an entire library from a home computer to a phone, wouldn't just fix the sync issue, it would leapfrog what everybody else currently offers. (Though the unlimited streaming Zune Pass for Kin would be a close second.)

Also, no third-party apps are currently using the upcoming cloud-to-device messaging service Google showed off—it's like push notifications on the iPhone, but super-powered, so you could send links and even begin app downloads on your phone from, say, your desktop browser.Update: The Chrome-to-Phone extension is live, and it works for the basic things Google showed, like sending links, maps, and YouTube videos from your browser to the phone. It was pretty instant, though I think I tried to send too much stuff to fast, and wound up building up a queue of links that got stuck, and then executed really fast, one after the other. Still, impressive. (No OTA app or music downloading yet, though.)

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Hello, Android

Android 2.2 is the first version of Android that feels totally complete—it performs like it should and it has most of the features it should. It's not quite at the point my mother could use it without a precarious learning curve, but you can see how it's going to get better. It's safe to say that with Froyo, Android has become something that most people really can use—and love.

Considering again where Android was 6, 12 and 18 months ago, I can believe the promises Google has made: that Android will blow your mind in another 6 months. The future of Android really has never looked brighter.

Fastest version of Android yet, in an actually noticeable way

Interface improved in small ways all around

Flash!

Built-in portable hotspot powers (though subject to your carrier's evil whims)

Android Market is better in key ways, but needs more work

Flash!

The keyboard still blows

The music and videos situation is pretty sad

The overall complexity of Android remains

Android 2.0 Review: Almost Human

A year ago, Android was an unfinished OS for nerds, bursting with potential. With Android 2.0, it's evolved into something sleeker, more refined and focused—but still something not quite human.

Over the last year, Android's evolved more rapidly and appeared in more shapes than any other smartphone OS. Every major update has made Android more capable and advanced, while custom interfaces from companies like HTC and Motorola, mean it's constantly and continually shifting shapes. When you look at the bucket of bolts everybody started with, some of the oh-so-shiny end results were kind of amazing. Android 2.0 blows all of that away, and lays down a platform for the next year that's wildly more compelling, even as it retains a lot of the same fundamental weaknesses.

We reviewed on Android 2.0 on the Motorola Droid—our review of the actual phone is here.

New Skin, Same Awkward Body

Android 2.0 is glossy—not in an Apple "the whole world is shiny and reflective" kind of way, but more like molded plastic for a collectible action figure. The cartoon whimsy—the classic Google rainbow of bright colors—are gone. The iconography, redrawn for high-res displays packed with tons of pixels, is smoother and sleeker, more subtle, and forces you to ask yourself, "Google designed this?"

While icons and menubars have been polished to fine gloss, and some things are cleaner and better organized—settings, for instance—overall, the user experience is basically the same: three desktops, which you can pack with icons and widgets; the still brilliant drop-down notification shade, which pools everything Android wants to tell you; and a pop-up tab where all of your apps are at. This is all still fine, mostly, if a bit muddled.

The reason that cluttered interface confusion is mostly fine is that multitasking with Android is addictive, and it's a better, easier-to-use implementation than any phone but the Pre. The window shade, a simple but powerful concept, is what makes it work. If I'm browsing the internet and get a message, I can pull the shade down, check the message, and go right back to browsing. Or flip over to messaging, reply, and get right back to browsing. At this, Android 2.0 excels, especially now that everything runs faster.

The long press and menu button conventions are still used nearly everywhere throughout the OS, but almost always inconsistently. If you're trying to do something in-app and have no idea how, there's a good chance the action you're looking for is buried behind the menu button or a long press. But these controls do different things in almost every single app, and even sometimes in the same app, depending on the context.

Universal search, and in particular, voice commands which let you quickly access search, map or navigate with surprising accuracy (seriously, it deciphers my mumbling better than my mom), are probably the most significant improvements to usability. Universal search isn't quite as universal as we'd like, though. It only pores over apps, contacts, YouTube, music and the web—you have to go into the messaging and email apps separately to search through them, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

And while Android 2.0 iscapable of multitouch, other than making typing smoother, it's nowhere to be found, at least not where I want it: the browser and maps. Also, the portrait keyboard's still too tiny.

A Killer Machine, Sorta

Software is inextricably tied to hardware in many respects, and nowhere is that more true than performance. Droid, the first Android 2.0 phone—and the only one we've used—is ridiculously capable, with an ARM Cortex A8 TI OMAP3430 processor that's basically the same as the chips inside of the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS. Point being, it's got heavy duty processor firepower.

So it's absolutely inexplicable that while it's overall the fastest version of Android yet—most apps fly open instantly, run zippily and practically zoom from one to another, even with a couple running in the background—very basic user interface elements, like the main pop-up menu on the home screen and sliding over from one desktop to another, often stutter or lag (with no apps running up front, and just a couple of widgets on the desktop). At this point, it's clear that these performance hiccups are an Android problem, not a hardware deficiency. It's maddening to hold a badass phone like the Droid and watch it handle menus like a pussy.

Accounts, Contacts, Exchange and Other Serious-Sounding Words

Besides Google Maps Navigation Beta, Android 2.0's most significant upgrade for regular people is all about contacts and networking. Like the Palm Pre and HTC's Sense UI, it integrates contacts from multiple sources—namely, Facebook and Exchange (no Twitter yet). The scheme works exceptionally well, with finesse that's almost out of character for Google. The way it pulls in your Facebook contacts actually makes sense: When you add the account, you can choose to add all 900 of your Facebook contacts, or just the ones who you have actual Google contacts for. Oh, sweet reason! It even managed to match our address book contacts with correlating Facebook accounts pretty accurately and seamlessly, with a few exceptions.

1. Everybody whose name is capitalized in the screenshot is matched up with Facebook—I loathe capital letters, but got over the inconsistency.
2. And the rarely mismatched contacts prove difficult, if not impossible, to completely straighten out.

Quick Contact is what keeps this orgy of personal information from getting too messy when it's time to get down to business—clicking on a contact's icon blooms a row of icons, letting you instantly ping them via SMS, phone, email, Facebook or whatever you want.

Android finally approaches a real smartphone when it comes to accounts. Multiple Google accounts and Exchange support come stock. What's that mean? Well, if you have a hosted Google apps account for work, and a personal one (like all of us at Giz do), you can use the awesome native Gmail application for both, instead of being forced to relegate one of the accounts to the separate, okay-but-not-as-good email app, which is what handles all of your Exchange, IMAP and POP mail. The only bummer is that you still have to toggle between each Google account mailbox in the Gmail app. (Yes, there are two different email applications. A Gmail app, and one for everything else. And they're completely different.)

There's one serious limitation to the multiple Google account support: The only Google calendars that sync to the phone are the ones from your main Google account, not your secondary one. Exchange calendars, on the other hand, use the separate-but-equal-as-far-as-I-can-tell "Corporate Calendars" app. We tested Exchange support using mail2web's free service, and everything seemed to show up correctly, FWIW.

Maps

The biggest change to Google Maps is Navigation, which Wilson Rothman, a Magellan for our time, reviewed extensively here. My assessment is mostly the same after a weekend in a car—it's pretty good, but occasionally befuddling and hard to get around. A potential point of confusion is that Navigation is both integrated into Maps and also its own distinct app, unlike Latitude.

Also new, sorta, is layers. Basically, every bit of information you wanna see in Maps is now a "layer." Like if I've got Latitude up on the map, and want to see nearby coffee places with satellite view, that's three layers—Latitude, a search for coffee, and satellite view. It can get a little confusing, especially if you're going from search to search or Maps to Navigation and then back to Maps—none of it's conceptually clean or simple, and the interface isn't always aren't entirely self-apparent. Also. Pinch. To. Zoom. I want it.

Browse Awesomer, But No (Multi)Touchy

The browser's faster, smarter and more powerful, and is probably the second best browser now, next to mobile Safari. It mostly cuts through lardass sites like Gizmodo with pep previous versions didn't, with more responsive scrolling and panning (slowdown doeshappen though). The browser actually starts you out on each site with a view of the entire page now, which is nicer in theory, but then it makes you want to pinch to zoom in—which, like Maps, is not enabled. You're stuck with unwieldly buttons and double-taps that never quite line the page up the way they should. If Palm, who's an insect by comparison, can pinch and zoom with impunity, why can't Google? Don't say it's out of friendship, because Apple doesn't even like you guys anymore.

Well, It Would Be a Better Camera

More controls! Yay! White balance, focusing mode, color and more. It's just too bad that on the Droid, the camera's completely unresponsive garbage. I don't know if it's software or hardware, so I'm mentioning in it both here and in our Droid review. Fix please.

Multimedia, or the Lack Thereof

The only way to get your music and videos on the phone is to manually drag and drop the files. There is no syncing, no easy way to get your music library onto your phone. How are normal people supposed to figure this out? Verizon reps actually joked about how putting music on the Droid is sure to make for a lovely Saturday afternoon. What. The. Shit.

And, there's not even a built-in video player! I have a phone with drop-dead gorgeous screen that I can't use to play movies without digging up my own video app, even if I could figure out how to get videos onto it. Correction: The video player's tucked inside of the slow and rather buggy Gallery application, where you also browse photos. And it wouldn't play videos that worked perfectly on a Zune HD or iPhone. Also, it and the music player are hideous.

Until I can magically and perfectly sync 12 gigs of music and videos over the air, you can't get away with not having a media sync desktop application. And DoubleTwist, a third-party app that can sync to Android, doesn't really count, since it's not bundled with it. (Update: FWIW, if you know where to look, Motorola offers a PC-only Media Link application for its Android phones. But it still doesn't solve the larger Android problem—Google needs to specify an easy-to-use syncing solution for people who need that.) Make no mistake, for a phone platform that's supposed to be ready for consumers now, this is a disaster, like a spaceship that's about to shoot into the atmosphere with a gaping hole in the side.

Goin' to the Android Market, Buyin' Some Apps

The Android Market has over 10,000 apps, and its state of the union is still a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's finally got official apps from Facebook, Amazon, Pandora and other critical names people expect on their phone. On the other, and almost universally, these apps aren't nearly as polished or full-featured as their iPhone counterparts (look no further than the Facebook app, which lacks even messaging in Android). And games? It's a pretty desolate wasteland, if you're looking for something beyond NES emulators. The library is getting better, and will undoubtedly keep getting better, but it's hard not to lament Android's comparative app ghetto, even as the platform's poised to explode. (Update: Another point I forgot to mention, and part of the reason Android games are limited in scope, is the storage limit for apps since they can't be installed on the SD card—for instance, it's 256MB on the Droid.)

A problem that's currently plaguing the ecosystem, and is hopefully not a foreboding omen of the fragmentation to come, is that many apps weren't designed for the higher resolution screens that Android 2.0 supports, so their icons and graphics render crap-ugly on Droid, even in the main menu. (Granted, the phenomenon is partly Google's fault for restricting access to the 2.0 SDK to all but a select group of privileged developers until basically the day Droid was announced.)

The Market itself, while it got a desperately needed facelift with 1.6, still has a ways to go. There's no way to update all of your applications simultaneously—you have to click through the update process for each one. And finding apps remains a problem. Browsing for apps exclusively on your phone is a tedious experience, especially when there's so many apps to wade through. Besides more refined browsing and suggestions, there needs to a way to look through the Market on your desktop. Also, Google's got this whole cloud thing going, why aren't my apps tied to my Google account, so if I move to another phone, they'll all magically repopulate it, like my contacts?

Wherefore Art Thou, Android?

I probably sound like I'm more down on Android 2.0 than I actually am. I like it a lot, truthfully. It's an amazing conduit for Google's services. If your online life is lock, stock and barrel Google, there really isn't a better or more powerful smartphone for getting stuff done in that universe. The Gmail app is a perfect distillation of Gmail for a small screen. The Google Talk app, if you have a bunch of friends using Gtalk, is fantastic. Google, really, is Android's greatest strength. Excellent multitasking is a close second.

In time, Android very well could be the internet phone, hands down, in terms of raw capabilities. And while it's not as easy to use or polished or seamless as the iPhone—or to some extent, Palm's WebOS—it's way more usable than most other smartphones, and keeps evolving, way faster than anyone else, continually closing that gap. Android 2.0's potential finally feels as enormous as the iPhone's, and I get kinda tingly thinking about it. I can't say Android 2.0 is ready for your mom yet, but it's definitely ready for anybody reading this.