Posted by Steen Andersson, Group Product Manager, Google Drive (Cross-posted on the Google Drive Blog.) When you store important files in Google Drive they’re not only safe, they’re accessible from any device. And finding them again from any device should be super easy so we’re rolling out a new search experience to get you better results — even faster.
Drive lets you search across all your files, regardless of the device they came from. To make that easier, you can use these new ways to find your files:
Narrow your search to a file type from the search box on Android, iOS, and the web.
Open advanced search instantly from the search box.
Access recent files or search Drive from the home screen using 3D Touch on iOS.
Search Drive using the iOS search bar without opening the Drive app.
Several behind-the-scenes improvements give your search queries even better results than they did before. And to get more specific results, anyone can now do the following:
Search for shared files by file owner using their name or email address.
Use advanced search options like the date a file was modified, words it contains, or who it was shared with.
This is all part of an ongoing effort to make Drive the easiest place to find your files. Look for these features as they roll out in the coming weeks.
Since HTC started htcdev.com with the possibility to unlock bootloader on HTC devices, I noticed that false information and beliefs are spreading around the world and more and more people think (and tell!) other users, that their warranty will be voided after unlocking particular device. This is not true!
In the past I wrote a short article on xda-developers about warranties and why, against common believes, flashing custom ROMs does not void your warranty. You can find this thread here.
Heres some information worth pointing out:
Warranty is a contract. In every country there are laws and regulations about warranties, however these vary from place to place and may be slightly different in your country, keep that in mind.
If its a contract, then both sides have some obligations and rights. Both - rights and obligations - needs to be written in the warranty, otherwise they doesnt exist. Warranty statements must be consistent with generally applicable law.
As a contract, warranty can be created as the parties want, as long as its consistent with generally applicable law.
To know exactly whats written in your warranty dont try to Google it - take it out of the box and READ IT. Dont trust what others say - their warranty might be different to your own.
Now, the question is - why unlocking the bootloader doesnt void the warranty? The answer is very simple. Because HTCs warranty contract doesnt state it. The only information about warranty on htcdev.com you can find is this:
So, once again:
"It is our responsibility to caution you that not all claims resulting or caused by or from the unlocking of the bootloader may be covered under warranty."
Is there any information, that unlocking bootloader voids warranty? Nope. So basically, what does it mean? Only this - if you brick your device as a result of e.g. flashing custom ROM (unlocked bootloader allows you doing that), you may have no warranty claim for that particular incident.
Two more important things to conclude:
If "not all claims may be covered under warranty", then (logic conversion) some claimsmay still be covered under warranty.
Even if you cant claim something under warranty because it was caused by or from the unlocking of the bootloader, that doesnt mean you have lost your warranty. You still have your warranty and you still can claim under warranty, but this warranty wont cover those particular claims caused by or from the unlocking of the bootloader.
So basically, HTC warns you, that some of the actions you might take after unlocking the bootloader may lead to a situation, when particular issue cant be covered under warranty.
Also, this information on htcdev.com doesnt expand or restrict your warranty terms. It doesnt change it at all. If warranty is given in the paper form, then as a contract the only way to change it, is a paper form too (if not stated otherwise in the warranty itself). HTC just kindly reminds you some sort of information you can conclude from the warranty itself.
Once again, if you are interested why flashing custom ROMs doesnt void warranty as well, please read this thread.
PS. Im also wondering why Samsung users are so crazy about so called flash counter and "Triangle Away" application. They dont need it to have a valid warranty, even with a yellow triangle.
Disclaimer:
This text is just for education purpose. Its not a law itself so you cant base your claims versus a company on this. I may be wrong in many parts - feel free to write a comment under this post and I will make any necessary corrections. I dont know the laws in every country so there may be some slight differences.
Have any questions or comments? Feel free to share! Also, if you like this article, please use media sharing buttons (Twitter, G+, Facebook) below this post!
Posted by Anthony Maurice, Fun Propulsion Labs at Google
Fun Propulsion Labs at Google* is back with an exciting new release for game developers. We’ve updated Pie Noon (our open source Android game) to add support for Google Cardboard, letting you jump into the action directly using your Android phone as a virtual reality headset! Select your targets by looking at them and throw pies with a flick of the switch.
Look out for incoming pie!
We used the Cardboard SDK for Android, which helps simplify common virtual reality tasks like head tracking, rendering for Cardboard, and handling specialized input events. And you might remember us from before, bringing exciting game technologies like FlatBuffers, Pindrop, and Motive, all of which you can see in use in Pie Noon.
You can grab the latest version of Pie Noon on Google Play to try it out, or crack open the source code, and take a look at how we brought an existing game into virtual reality.
* Fun Propulsion Labs is a team within Google thats dedicated to advancing gaming on Android and other platforms.
Originally posted on the Google Apps Developers Blog
As we announced last week, Inbox is a whole new take on, well, the inbox. It’s built by the Gmail team, but it’s not Gmail—it’s a new product designed to help users succeed in today’s world of email overload and multiple devices. At the same time, Inbox can also help you as a sender by offering new tools to make your emails more interactive!
Specifically, you can now take advantage of a new feature called Highlights.
Exactly like it sounds, Highlights “highlight” or surface key information and actions from an email and display them as easy-to-see chips in the inbox. For example, if you’re an airline that sends flight confirmation emails, Highlights can surface the “Check-in for your flight” action and display live flight status information for recipients right in the user’s main list. The same can apply if you send customers hotel reservations, event details, event invitations, restaurant reservations, purchases, or other tickets. Highlights help ensure that your recipients see your messages and the important details at a glance.
To take advantage of Highlights, you can mark up your email messages to specify which details you want surfaced for your customers. This will make it possible for not only Inbox, but also Gmail, Google Now, Google Search, and Maps to interact more easily with your messages and give your recipients the best possible experience across Android, iOS and the web.
As an example, the following JSON-LD markup can be used by restaurants to send reservation confirmations to their users/customers:
When your confirmation is received, users will see a convenient Highlight with the pertinents at the top of their Inbox, then can open the message to obtain the full details of their reservation as shown above.
Getting started is simple: read about email markup, check out more markup examples, then register at developers.google.com/gmail/markup and follow the instructions from there!
by Shalini Agarwal, Product Management, Inbox by Gmail
Posted by Amir Shevat, Google Developers Launchpad Program Manager
With new events, improved courses and an expanded mentorship network - Startup Launch is now Google Developers Launchpad. We’re changing our program name to emphasize how you can use our resources as a launch pad to scale and monetize your app business. Read on to learn about our upcoming events and how you can apply to participate.
Events: Launchpad Week goes global
Launchpad Week, Launchpad’s weeklong in-person bootcamp for early-stage apps, continues to expand, with new 2015 programs planned in Munich, Mexico City, Helsinki, Bogota, and Sydney, to name a few. We’ll also regularly host these events in Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, and Paris.
We kicked off Launchpad Week in Bengaluru, India and Bordeaux, France last month. 32 startups and 80 experts from these communities gathered at Idiom Design Center and Le Node for a week of product, UX, and technology sprints designed to help transform ideas into validated, scalable businesses.
Featured startups from Bengaluru included iReff, an app that helps pre-paid mobile users find the best recharge plan for their specific needs. In Bordeaux, Google Developer Expert David Gageot volunteered as a tech mentor, helping startups “ship early, ship often” through testing and continuous integration.
Events: Google Developers Summits
For later-stage startups, we’re providing some of the best tech experts to help optimize apps for Material Design, Android TV, and Google Cast at two-day Google Developer Summits. At an event in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last week, we had participants such as game developer Etermax, the team behind Trivia Crack. Similar events happened in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Bengaluru this month, and we’re looking forward to inviting more startups to this program in London, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, and New York in 2015.
Products: Your app, powered by Google
In 2014, we helped over 5,000 developers in 170 countries get their ideas off the ground by providing the infrastructure back-end that allows developers to build incredible products. For example, our program delivered software architecture reviews and Google Cloud Platform credits to help entrepreneurs in the program build businesses that scale with them. Check out how Fansino is using Google Cloud Platform to let artists interact with their fans.
We’ve also expanded our product offer for early-stage startups to include AdWords promotional offers for new accounts. Whatever your monetization plan, we’re making it easy to get started with tools like the new In-app Billing API and instruction from the AdMob team.
Courses: Upskilling you and your app
Starting this month, we’ll offer a virtual curriculum of how Google products can help your startup. We’re kicking things off with new Launchpad Online videos covering Google Analytics - are you observing how your users use your app? How do different promotional channels perform?
The series continues in April 2015 with AdMob products, and will expand with instruction in implementing material design and conducting user research later in the year.
If you can’t wait, we’ve also built courses together with Udacity to take your technical skills to the next level on topics, including Android, Java, Web Fundamentals, and UX.
Apply to get involved
Apply to Google Developers Launchpad program to take advantage of these offers - g.co/launchpad. Here’s to a great launch!
Just tried HWiNFO to monitor Windows 10 CPU usage, temperature..., very nice:) Comprehensive Hardware Analysis, Monitoring and Reporting for Windows and DOS. FREEWARE!
In-depth Hardware Information From a quick overview unfolding into the depth of all hardware components. Always up-to date supporting latest technologies and standards.
Real-Time System Monitoring Accurate monitoring of all system components for actual status and failure prediction. Customizable interface with variety of options.
Extensive Reporting Multiple types of reports, status logging and interfacing with other tools or add-ons.
Posted by Leon Nicholls, Developer Programs Engineer and Antonio Fontan, Software Engineer
At Google I/O 2015 we announced the new Google Cast Remote Display APIs for Android and iOS that make it easy for mobile developers to bring graphically intensive apps or games to Google Cast receivers. Now you can use the powerful GPUs, CPUs and sensors of the mobile device in your pocket to render both a local display and a virtual one to the TV. This dual display model also allows you to design new game experiences for the display on the mobile device to show maps, game pieces and private game information.
We wanted to show you how easy it is to take an existing high performance game and run it on a Chromecast. So, we decided to port the classic Quake® III Arena open source engine to support Cast Remote Display. We reached out to ID Software and they thought it was a cool idea too. When all was said and done, during our 2015 I/O session “Google Cast Remote Display APIs for Games” we were able to present the game in 720p at 60 fps!
During the demo we used a wired USB game controller to play the game, but weve also experimented with using the mobile device sensors, a bluetooth controller, a toy gun and even a dance mat as game controllers.
Since youre probably wondering how you can do this too, heres the details of how we added Cast Remote Display to Quake. The game engine was not modified in any way and the whole process took less than a day with most of our time spent removing UI code not needed for the demo. We started by using an existing source port of Quake III to Android which includes some usage of kwaak3 and ioquake3 source code.
Next, we registered a Remote Display App ID using the Google Cast SDK Developer Console. There’s no need to write a Cast receiver app as the Remote Display APIs are supported natively by all Google Cast receivers.
To render the local display, the existing main Activity was converted to an ActionBarActivity. To discover devices and to allow a user to select a Cast device to connect to, we added support for the Cast button using MediaRouteActionProvider. The MediaRouteActionProvider adds a Cast button to the action bar. We then set the MediaRouteSelector for the MediaRouter using the App ID we obtained and added a callback listener using MediaRouter.addCallback. We modified the existing code to display an image bitmap on the local display.
To render the remote display, we extended CastPresentation and called setContentView with the game’s existing GLSurfaceView instance. Think of the CastPresentation as the Activity for the remote display. The game audio engine was also started at that point.
Next we created a service extending CastRemoteDisplayLocalService which would then create an instance of our CastPresentation class. The service will manage the remote display even when the local app goes into the background. The service automatically provides a convenient notification to allow the user to dismiss the remote display.
Then we start our service when the MediaRouter onRouteSelected event is called by using CastRemoteDisplayLocalService.startService and stop the service when the MediaRouter onRouteUnselected event is called by using CastRemoteDisplayLocalService.stopService.
To see a more detailed description on how to use the Remote Display APIs, read our developer documentation. We have also published a sample app on GitHub that is UX compliant.
You can download the code that we used for the demo. To run the app you have to compile it using Gradle or Android Studio. You will also need to copy the "baseq3" folder from your Quake III game to the “qiii4a” folder in the root of the SD card of your Android mobile device. Your mobile device needs to have at least Android KitKat and Google Play services version 7.5.71.
With 17 million Chromecast devices sold and 1.5 billion touches of the Cast button, the opportunity for developers is huge, and it’s simple to add this extra functionality to an existing game. Were eager to see what amazing experiences you create using the Cast Remote Display APIs.
Trick your brain: black and white photo turns to colour! - Colour: The Spectrum of Science - BBC
Programme website: http://bbc.in/1Q7ik5S Look at the photo in the clip. From a picture that contains no colour our brains are able to construct a full colour image.
I tried to develop a example to experience it - Display image in opposite color to Trick your brain.
Posted by Catherine Davis, former 4th grade teacher and Director of Academic Technology at Pilgrim School
(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)
Editors note: Today we’re launching a new Chrome extension, Share to Classroom, which solves a big pain point for teachers: getting all students to the same website during class. The Share to Classroom extension works on any laptop, including Chromebooks, Macs and PCs. Catherine Davis, former 4th grade teacher and Director of Academic Technology at Pilgrim School, piloted the Classroom extension with Mrs. Shorkey’s 3rd grade class, and here she describes her experience using this new extension and the impact on her students.
Sharing a website with my students is a great way to get them engaged. When we studied South America, I shared a video of Tierra del Fuego, and my students were able to view the coast, hear the wind and see the waves soar. But getting a class full of 4th graders on the same web page is a huge challenge. I typically write the URL on the board, then walk around to help each student who misses a capital or underscore or backslash. My students get frustrated, I get frustrated, and before I know it 10 minutes of precious teaching time is lost.
So I was thrilled to pilot the Share to Classroom extension. With the extension I can open a website and “push” it to my Google Classroom students, so the page opens immediately on all their devices. Our 3rd graders gasped when we tried it – the webpage instantaneously popped up on all of their screens.
The new extension lets me engage my students and help them drive their own learning on 1:1 devices at our school. When our 3rd graders were studying Native American culture, I pushed a website to the class so they could research traditional clothing and food. The students aren’t locked to the page I send, and one student navigated from there to an even better site. With the Classroom extension, the student was able to push the new site to me, and I reviewed and pushed to the entire class. She had a boost of confidence when her discovery drove class discussion.
Using the extension also lets me think on my feet. When discussing pioneers, a brave student raised his hand and asked “What’s a stage coach?” I realized my students hadn’t been exposed to the term. I immediately pulled up a definition and video and pushed it to the class. I also saved the webpage as a draft to post to my other Classroom students later. I could have projected on a screen, but the intimacy of having the webpage on each device allows students to explore on their own, hear clearly and watch repeatedly. It also levels the playing field for ELL and students of different backgrounds so everyone starts literally on the same page.
As teachers, we never feel we have enough time to do everything we want with our students. The new Share to Classroom extension gives us back those few minutes it takes to get students to the same place and makes learning about investigating, not about navigating.
*Note: Google Apps admins can install the extension for their entire domain so that it’s easiest for teachers and students to get started. Teachers and students both need the extension in order to push web pages to each other.
Since we backed Chipolo (and the failed Gear Tag) a while back on Kickstarter we have started to see a few more variations of a bluetooth tag for locating your belongings. However the new kid on the block is very thin, and can be used for many applications too. The app thats going to be launched alongside the card for both iOS and Android (and we hope there isnt a delay on the Android version) has a large range of features. Used with the free Find’em Tracking mobile app, this innovative tracking device uses Bluetooth 4.0 technology to alert the user when they are about to leave valuable belongings behind - so attached to your keys or slipped into your wallet you wont forget those important items at the pub. The mobile app is integrated with Google Maps to help you locate the last place you left your baggage or wallet giving you the exact location of where they last were, assuming the bluetooth has been enabled we guess. You can flag the range of alerts from 20-40ft away, of course you can customize this to however you like. Gary Nazarain had this to say about his new project “Leaving your valuables behind is a problem that people face in their daily lives and can be avoided with the Find’em Tracking device and app,“ said Find’em Tracking CEO Gary Nazarian. “Since our product is the thinnest Bluetooth tracking device out there, it easily fits into a wallet and allows you to never leave your valuables behind ever again. And if you never loose your valuables in your wallet, your identity is that much safer.” Of course not just your wallet can be protected, could be handy for luggage - get an alert your baggage is about to hit the carousel is a good example of its usage. Want to know more ? than head over to http://www.findemtracking.com/ and order yours for a very reasonable $24.99 however this is a time dependent offer so act soon. Find’Em Tracking Features: · Instant Loss-Prevention Alert – Set the distance from 10-150 feet and get an instant alert once out of range. · Reverse Tracking – Find’em Tracking card has a button to make your phone ring if users can’t find their phone. · Find’em Tracking Radar – Precise radar will indicate the radius between the user and their valuables and guide the user to find their valuables. · Google Maps GPS – If for any reason the user doesn’t notice the alert go off or their wallet is not within tracking distance, use integrated Google Maps to find the last specific GPS location. · Luggage Tracker – Alerts users when their luggage is ready to be picked up from the baggage claim terminal. We will review the device once we get one, which is pegged for an early 2014 release. We are very excited about this product, as a traveler (not in the caravan white trash sense) and also forgetful it will be good knowing Im not going to leave my stuff behind - which I sometimes do. Review coming soon so, stay tuned.
As we announced last week, Inbox is a whole new take on, well, the inbox. It’s built by the Gmail team, but it’s not Gmail—it’s a new product designed to help users succeed in today’s world of email overload and multiple devices. At the same time, Inbox can also help you as a sender by offering new tools to make your emails more interactive!
