Google

Google Play Movies & TV now offers offline viewing on Chromebooks—handy, given the hardware’s other shortcomings away from an internet connection.

Hey Google, Here’s How You Win Messaging

This week I saw a demo of the best messaging system yet. One where SMS and non-SMS messages, all calls, come to all your devices automatically. It only had one major flaw. It’s trapped on an iPhone. The promised beauty of the new iMessage is that it manufactures the illusion that everyone you know is…

Remember Glasstron? We Were Such Dorks Back Then

Google’s latest attempt to make Glass™™™ fashionable reminds me (at least aesthetically) of Sony’s Glasstron — a cyberpunk headset display from 1998. The company claimed that it “replicates the viewing experience of a 52-inch TV at 6.5 feet.” Glasstron was obviously a flop, but it wasn’t just because the thing made the Sony executives above…

Aereo’s Bringing Live Streaming TV To Chromecasts and Android Devices

Aereo, the brilliant (if beleaguered) system that lets you watch or record broadcast TV from any screen, anywhere, just added support for Google Chromecast and a handy Android app. Now, basically any Google-powered device you own can be a TV. With the Android app installed on your device, you can set up your Chromecast wonder-dongle…

Google Brings Its 3D-Modeling Project Tango to Tablets Too

Google just announced a Project Tango tablet development kit that expands the company’s 3D modeling experiment. The project comes to you from ATAP, Google’s research team that works on crazy projects. This is future tech we’re not even sure about yet. The new dev kit is packed with an NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, 4GB of…

Explore All 12 World Cup Stadiums (No Riot Gear Required)

The World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the known universe. The only thing is Brazil is a long trek for most of us, and, y’know things around the world cup tend to get a bit… rowdy? Well, Google Maps is bringing Street View to all twelve of the stadiums, so you can explore…

Conan Shows How Google’s New Cars Have No Driver—Or Mercy

Depending on who you listen to, Google’s driverless cars are either exactly what we need or doomed to failure. But, as Conan points out, that’s all beside the point until the bugs are ironed out. This (lightly edited) video shows what we might be in store for in the coming years: cars with no driver,…

Google Now Offers End-to-End Encryption on Email

Google has released the source code for a new extension for Chrome—but this is no ordinary extension. It’s called End-to-End, and it will provide users with the ability to encrypt their email the whole way from outbox to recipient. The new system uses the open-source encryption standard OpenPGP, and should make it easy for users…

What You Should Know About Google’s Military Robots—In Comic Form

Last year, Google bought eight robotics companies in just six months, making the search giant a US military contractor. So what is the relationship between Google and the Department of Defense? This comic sheds a bit of light on the current situation. Cartoonist and journalist Andy Warner outlines Google’s connection to DARPA in his short…

Google’s First Fashionable Glass Frames: Perhaps Not That Fashionable?

We’ve long known that Google wanted to make Glass fashionable, and now it’s teamed up with Diane Von Furstenberg to create a series of alternative frames for its face-mounted computer. You can decide for yourselves if they look good or not. The DVF collection comprises five new frames and eight new shades with which to…

The HTC One (E8): A Plastic Alternative to HTC’s Flagship Phone

HTC has announced a budget version of the One (M8), called the One (E8). It drops the premium metal build of the M8 in favour of a range of brightly coloured plastic casings—but otherwise its specs are surprisingly strong. There’s a 5-inch 1080p display up front, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 backed by 2GB of…

Asus Transformer Book V: A 5-in-1, Android-Windows Phone, Tablet and PC

ASUS has just announced one of its most unusual products yet: a 5-in-1 device that’s a phone, tablet and PC, which runs both Windows and Android. No, really. At its fullest, the Transformer Book V is a 12.5-inch Windows laptop. Detach the keyboard, and it turns into a Windows tablet. Tug on the odd bulge…

WSJ: Google Spending $1 Billion on Satellites to Cover Earth in Wi-Fi

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google plans to spend over $1 billion on a fleet of satellites that will be used to provide internet to parts of the world that currently lack digital connections. According to “people familiar with the project,” Google will use 180 “small, high-capacity satellites” that will orbit the Earth…

Google Wants To Bring The Best Moto X Feature to Every Android Phone

One of the best features of the Moto X—besides that perfectly-sized screen—is its always-on listening capability. Nothing beats saying “OK, Google” and watching the device wake up from sleep to do your bidding. It works like magic, and if this Android Police report is true, it’ll be coming to every Android phone before you know…

How to Stream Anything from Android to AirPlay

The AirPlay wireless streaming system makes sharing stuff between your phone and TV incredibly easy—but only if stick with Apple gadgets. Try to share content from an Android and suddenly you’re out of luck. But with these third-party streaming apps, Airplay and Android can finally speak the same language. DoubleTwist DoubleTwist is a triple threat.…

Just a year after starting it up, Google’s shutting down its Texas-based Moto X assembly factory, citing weak sales and high costs. The decision to close this plant was apparently unrelated to Google’s plans to sell Motorola off to China-based Lenovo. But whatever the reasoning, it sure is a bummer.

iOS 8 Concept Shows Just How Useful Widgets and Live Tiles Would Be

Designer Jay Machalani just posted a concept that explores how iOS could be vastly improved if app icons weren’t just static blobs. Instead, they could be dynamic UI objects that behaved more like widgets in Android or Live Tiles in Windows Phone. Machalani’s concept is so slickly produced that it might leave you drooling. He…

You Can Check Your YouTube Stream Quality From Home Now

Man, if you’re trying to watch a YouTube nature video—or any type of YouTube video for that matter—it’s just not the same if it’s not streaming in the full glory of HD. But now thanks to the Google Video Quality Report, you can check on your stream quality right from home. http://www.google.com/get/videoqualityreport/ Now, there are…

Google’s Self-Driving Car Is the Future We Need

In the aftermath of Google’s unexpected unveiling of its very own steering wheel-free cutemobile, the internet is dripping again with opinions about self-driving cars. Some say they’ll save us. Some say they’re doomed. But really, we’re all after the same thing: a better way to get around. And right now, self-driving cars are the most…

The Evolution of Google’s Iconic Logo

It may feel like Google’s colorful lettering has been with us since the dawn of time, but it’s been a long, bumpy road getting there. When it comes to logo design, sometimes you have to face-plant before you can fly. And in Google’s case, there’s been plenty of face-planting. Though it would have been hard…