Google is hosting its Chrome Dev Summit today. There hasn’t been a lot of news out of the event, but one number that stood out in today’s keynote by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher was that there are now 2 billion Chrome installs in active use across desktop and mobile.
This is the first time Google has shared this number. Sadly, Google didn’t announce any new user numbers for Chrome today. The latest stat for active Chrome users remains at 1 billion — a number Google shared in April. While this number is surely higher today than it was six months ago, the company decided to focus on the number of active browser install today.
“I wanted to make this point that there are a lot of Chrome browsers out there,” Fisher said. “What’s exciting about this to you all is that when you think about building for the web, there’ a lot of browsers out there that implement the latest web standards — that implement the latest and greatest web features.”
As Google likes to say, it now has seven products with more than a billion users (Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, Youtube and the Google Play store).
Announced earlier this year, the PillDrill is a simple system designed to take some of the pain out of remembering to take medication – taking things between those big plastic pill boxes with the help of a little 21st century connectivity.
The system is built around the Pill Drill Hub, which offers up an audio/visual reminder when the time comes to take a dose. Once the pills are taken and a barcode is waved in front of the scanner, the WiFi connected system sends updates to friends and family members, keeping them abreast of the user’s daily dosage.
The Las Vegas company, which launched the system back in April has closed a $3 million round of angel investor funding, courtesy of undisclosed parties. The money is set to go toward distribution for the $200 at-home medication device.
PillDrill is also using the occasion to announce that it’s scored an innovation award at next year’s CES and added retired MedVenture Associates founder Annette Campbell-White to its board of directors.
Scientists at Imperial College of London have teamed with UK biotech company DNA Electronics to develop a USB stick-based HIV test capable of sophisticated detection in a fraction of the time of a standard test.
The computer plug-in just needs a single drop of blood to go to work, measuring the levels of HIV-1, changing the acidity and transmitting the results as an electrical signal that can be sent to a computer or mobile device. The whole process occurs in less half an hour to complete (with most tests averaging around 21 minutes), rather than the multiple day-long wait and lab requirements of other test.
The test in its current form looks to be most useful for patients who already know they have the virus, rather than serving as first-time detection, a function already fulfilled by a number of drug store kits. Since the test is capable of detecting the level of the virus in the blood, rather than relying on the presence antibodies, it could be valuable to patients on retroviral drugs, detecting whether the medication is doing its intended job and keeping HIV levels down, or whether the virus has developed a resistance to the drugs.
The presence of such technology could allow patients to monitor HIV levels at home with the disposable device in much the same way diabetics do with blood sugar. It could also prove valuable to those in remote locations who don’t have immediate access to medical care.
Android is the crown jewel in Google’s vast empire of software and web services, and its unprecedented success has inevitably attracted the scrutiny of European Union regulators. Today, Google steps up its public efforts to diminish European concerns over its mobile market dominance, and it’s doing it with the power of GIFs.
Google
You don’t think we offer choice, says Google, but have you seen how little choice iPhone buyers are getting? All the preloaded apps on an iPhone come from Apple. 39 out of 47 preloaded apps on Windows 10 phones come from Microsoft. But less than a third of preloaded apps on Samsung’s Galaxy S7 come from Google. So what’s the big deal?
Extending the point beyond apps, Google argues that it’s impossible for Android to have a market monopoly when the iPhone exists. "To ignore competition with Apple," says Google, "is to miss the defining feature of today’s competitive smartphone landscape."
The problem at the heart of the European investigation is actually Google’s control of its Play Store, which is the central portal for app distribution on Android and pretty much essential to any new Android smartphone. And since Apple doesn’t license or open-source iOS, and Microsoft’s Windows 10 has no mobile ecosystem to speak of, any new smartphone in Europe that isn’t an iPhone is compelled to carry Google’s apps.
Because Android manufacturers have to have the Play Store on their phones, Google can practically dictate whatever terms it wants to the companies signing up for the privilege. And that’s how it is that the basic suite of Google Play services and apps are installed on every new Android smartphone by default, including such apps as Google Maps, Google Play Music, Chrome, and YouTube. Granted, most of these are the best apps in their class, but the European Commission’s antitrust body is more worried about unfair market power.
But Google’s GIF counterarguments are strong. The Mountain View company also points out that apps like Snapchat, Spotify, and Dropbox have enjoyed hundreds of millions of downloads on Android, which runs counter to the notion that Google is suppressing competition. Google has its own messaging, music, and cloud storage services, and yet its mobile platform is open enough to sustain more popular alternatives without a problem.
What Google is saying, in a nutshell, is that Android is too flexible and manipulable by the user to ever really be locked down and anti-competitive. Okay, so Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei, and anyone else wanting to sell an Android phone is practically forced to ship it with Google apps on board. Is that really such a big deal if people can get their favored apps for free anyway? And moreover, Google makes the economic argument that "distributing products like Google Search together with Google Play permits us to offer our entire suite for free," so if you really like Google’s mobile apps and don’t want to pay extra for them, you should be happy with the status quo.
That’s Google’s argument, and the question now is how compelling the Euro regulators will find it when they reconvene to consider imposing substantial fines on Google’s practices.One more GIF, just to complete the set:
I guess the fun part about teaching robots to do pointless tasks much better than humans is that it's their time we’re wasting as well as our own. We could be teaching poor machines about art or poetry or what fresh grass feels like underfoot after too long living in the city, but no, they get to solve a Rubik’s Cube and don’t even feel good about it.
Anyway, chipmaker Infineon built the machine above to demonstrate how good its microprocessors are. The company claims its attempt is a world best, but it hasn’t yet been recognized by the Guinness World Records organization. It’s perhaps worth noting as well, that although the chips in Infineon’s robot are the same as those it wants to sell to autonomous car-makers, solving a Rubik’s Cube quickly is as much about mechanical dexterity as processing speed. Which is to say that this is a stunt rather than a demonstration.
In related news, a human person also recently claimed a new Rubik’s Cube speed record, solving the puzzle in just 4.74 seconds. (Again: unrecognized by the Guinness World Records organization, but faster than any known time.) Solving a Rubik’s Cube remains a functionally pointless task, but look, look: the human is much happier about it than the robot. That's worth something, I think.
As previously rumored, Nintendo will be ending production of the beleaguered Wii U “soon.” The news comes from a note on the company’s Japanese site, as spotted by Kotaku, which states that “production is scheduled to end soon.” Previous reports pegged the productionhalt as of this year, while others reported it would go on well into 2018.
The news should come as no surprise. With less than 14 million units sold worldwide, the Wii U was a commercial failure, despite a series of strong and original games from Nintendo. It’s the company’s worst-selling console, sitting behind the 21 million-selling GameCube.
Of course, the future isn’t exactly dire for Nintendo. The company recently unveiled its much-rumored Switch device, a portable tablet that can also work with a television like a console. Nintendo will be revealing the Switch’s release date and price in January.
As for this year, this week sees the launch of a surprise piece of hardware from the company, in the form of the miniature NES Classic Edition on November 11th.
Three months after they were introduced, Instagram stories are beginning to separate themselves from the Snapchat stories they are derived from. Today Instagram is introducing mentions, links, and an inline version of its Boomerang tool into stories. The result is a product that feels livelier than before, and truly distinct from Snapchat for the first time.
The new features represent the biggest update to stories since their launch. But only two of them will be available to everyone to start with. Links, which allow users to attach hyperlinks to individual Instagram stories, will be available only to verified users. You’ll know a link has been added to a story when you see the words “see more” on the bottom of a story. Tap it (or swipe up) and the link will load using Instagram’s in-app browser.
This marks the first time links have been allowed anywhere in Instagram beyond user profiles. (Hence the phrase “link in bio” littered throughout your feed.) Nathan Sharp, an Instagram product manager, told The Verge that the company added links to stories in response to the large number of brands using the feature to promote content there. Adding links to stories means users don’t have to leave the app, he said. “It was a question of trying to keep this seamless, linear narrative experience,” Sharp said. But he wouldn’t commit to saying that all users would be able to posts links eventually.
On the other hand, all users will be able to use mentions. Using the type tool on a snap and typing “@” will bring up a tray of your frequent contacts. You can tag them in a story whether they’re in it or not, and they’ll be notified inside with an Instagram direct message. Mentions show up in stories with an underline to signal that they’re tappable — tap once to bring up a preview of the profile, and tap again to go to the profile. But profile links only work if the name is moderately sized — make the mention too big or small and it will lose its magic underline.
It’s a nice touch that extends an advantage Instagram stories have over Snapchat — they’re designed to help you discover other accounts on the service. We saw this first whenInstagram brought stories to its popular Explore tab, highlighting popular users for those who haven’t yet followed them. Now every story offers a chance to highlight a person, place, or brand. If you’re a creator, that could be one reason to focus your efforts on Instagram instead of Snapchat, which offers fewer tools for finding new accounts.
The final new tool takes advantage of Boomerang, Instagram’s year-old standalone app for making looping videos. Now it appears as a creative tool within stories that is available even if you don’t have the app installed on your phone. Tap it to create a looping burst of up to five photos, which will then endlessly play and rewind. Story Boomerangs can be shorter than the roughly 1.5-second clips you get from the standalone app (just remove your finger while recording), and you can reverse the camera mid-shot if you like. You can also zoom in on your subject with one finger while recording in a new media format destined to be called the zoomerang.
The introduction of stories to Instagram portended a world where every social app has merged into one. With today’s news, the company has suggested that the stories format is more flexible than it looks. Instagram hasn’t quite made the feature its own. But it’s getting there.
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