While Google Glass is about a year out from being available to the general public, apps are already starting to come out for Google Glass from early testers and developers eager to to be first to come to market.
Google Glass which has been designed with the idea to let Glass be manipulated with touch, gesture and voice, already has an app out that has already garnered a lot of attention called Winky. The app enables a user to take a picture of whatever they're looking at with just a wink.
Check out this video from inhabitants of Willamsburg, Brookly giving their opinion on Glass.
Google announced on Wednesday that its popular mapping app Google Maps has incorporated real time arrival and departure information for several New York City subway lines including the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 trains as well as the Times Square Shuttle.
That’s not the first time that Google Maps users will see a departure time at a subway station for those train lines. But previous departure information, like that provided for the rest of the subway system, is based on the scheduled departures of subway trains.
Google isn't the first private developer to pull data from the Mass Transit Authority (MTA) for developing an app; there are a couple of popular apps out there already including NextStop, SchedNYC and others, however Google is definitely the most well known. While this is a good start, there's still another hurdle which is getting the same real time information for the other two-thirds of the NYC subway system. Unfortunately those tracks don't have the same signal system and are several years and millions of dollars away. MTA engineers are reportedly working on a temporary solution to the problem.
You're not alone if you feel as if your home internet is a bit sluggish. As reported by the BBC, security experts have claimed that the largest cyberattack in Internet history is taking place right now, which is slowing services like Hulu and YouTube to a crawl and making global websites unreachable. Network security experts are worried that this can escalate to impact banking and email systems. What's going on?
Spamhaus, a non-profit group that has headquarters in London and Geneva, helps organizations to fight spam by providing them with content filters. The group is able to do this by maintaining blacklists on malicious servers. Recently, Sapmhaus blacklisted Cyberbunker, a Dutch company that provides webhosting services and states that it will host any kind of website "except child porn and anything related to terrorism." Sven Olaf Kamphuis who has claimed to be a spokesman for Cyberbunker has said that Spamhaus was abusing its position and shouldn't have the power to decide "what goes and does not go on the Internet." Spamhaus claims that Cyberbunker is in cahoots with 'criminal gangs' from Eastern Europe and Russia to coordinate DDoS attacks. Spamhaus claims these attacks started on March 19th and that these DDoS attacks are the largest in the history of the internet.
The technique "uses a long-known flaw in the Internet's basic plumbing," akin to "using a machine gun to spray an entire crowd when the intent is to kill one person." In other words, it's causing a major data pile-up.
Clogged Up
The effect that the DDoS is having is being felt globally. "If you imagine it as a motorway, attacks try and put enough traffic on there to clog up the on and off ramps," said Prof Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey.
"With this attack, there's so much traffic it's clogging up the motorway itself."
"They are targeting every part of the internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down," said Steve Linford, chief executive for Spamhaus.
Due to the massive amount of resources that these attacks are taking on Spamhaus and the problems they are causing, additional companies like Google are stepping in to help Spamhaus absorb the attacks.
The highly anticipated, futuristic digital eye-wear from Google named Glass will reportedly be manufactured in Santa Clara, California. Google will be working with Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, to assemble the product. Foxconn has been used by Apple for assembling iPhones, iPads and other Apple products.
This announcement by Google is yet another example of a high profile company bringing manufacturing back to the US and giving a boost to President Barack Obama's drive to bring “the next revolution in manufacturing is ‘Made in America’.”
Last year, Apple was the first major U.S. company to take President Obama's proposition seriously, with Apple CEO Tim Cook pledging to invest $100 million in American manufacturing and building one line of its Mac computers in the US.
Google currently has not commented on the story, so this report hasn't been confirmed as of yet, however if Google does indeed manufacture Glass in California, it would be a huge boost to American manufacturing and possibly pave the way for other U.S. electronics companies to follow suit.
Google is constantly looking to make adjustments to Google Maps and allowing people to explore the world, including the places that few people ever get to see with their own eyes. If you've ever had a fear of heights or just don't have mountain climbing experience then Google has got some good news... the company just started adding images of some of the highest vantages on the planet so you can get a view from the comforts of your own home!
In various expeditions that were done by Google employees in 2011 and 2012, Google revealed in its blog that it has been able to add images for four (Mount Elbrus in Europe, Mount Everest in Asia, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, and Aconcagua in South America) of seven of the tallest mountains (Seven Summits) on each of the world continents. No need to worry about acclimating to the high altitudes!
The 360 degree panoramic views that you're able to see were done by taking photographs by Google employees and then stitching them together with Google's proprietary software which it uses for creating street views.
Prior to the addition of Aconcagua, the highest vantage point that was in Google Street View was Colorado's Mount Evans which has an elevation of a little over 14,000 feet.
According to a post on Google's blog, the company will be shutting down its popular RSS Reader Google Reader due to declining useage and an effort to focus on putting energy into fewer services. The shut down of Google Reader is part of a broader "spring cleaning" which includes shutting down Google Cloud Connect, Google Building Maker, and the blackberry Google Voice application.
Google Reader is set to shut down on July 1 giving users a three-month period to find alternative feed-reading solutions as well as to export Google Reader data via Google Takeout.
For some suggestions as to other services that you can use, check out this article from USA Today which discusses four popular reader services to try.
For those of you who just can't imagine life without Google Reader, you can try signing this petition at Change.org that was created by Dan Lewis.
