Essentially, this is Google’s answer to Apple’s virtual voice assistant Siri for iOS, which remembers important dates on your calendar, reminds you of appointment times, and allows you to search the web via voice controls. However, Google Now goes a bit above and beyond this concept by taking the data from your daily routine, search history, and other user behavior.

For instance, Google Now will learn your daily commute home. And if there’s particularly congested traffic that would cause you to get home much later, it’ll send you a notification suggesting alternate routes. Another thing it does is update you on restaurants/retail stores as you’re walking past them, provides reviews of those stores, and other recommendations.

I really love the driving aspect of this.  The more I learn about Android 4.1 jelly bean, the more I’m thinking my next phone could be an android.

The neural network taught itself to recognize cats, which is actually no frivolous activity. This week the researchers will present the results of their work at a conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.

“We never told it during the training, ‘This is a cat,’ ” said Dr. Dean, who originally helped Google design the software that lets it easily break programs into many tasks that can be computed simultaneously. “It basically invented the concept of a cat. We probably have other ones that are side views of cats.”

The funny thing is this report, they really say WHY the came up a cat.  They actually came up with many faces, limbs and other things the computer was able to identify and a consistent ‘thing’ but I guess like everything on the interwebs, its cooler when its a cat.

As rumoured, Google’s going to announce a 7-inch, Nexus-branded tablet called the Nexus 7. According to the leak, it’s built by Asus, with a 1.3Ghz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, GeForce 12-core GPU and 1GB of RAM with two different storage variants: 8GB and 16GB.

The Nexus tablet will also feature NFC and run Google Wallet (probably only in the US) and Android Beam.

The screen is an IPS display with a 178-degree viewing angle, running a resolution of 1280×800. The device will also sport a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera. The battery will also give you nine hours worth of operation.

The 8GB model will set you back $US199 and the 16GB will cost $US249. No word in the document on local prices.

Looks like its going run jellybean, 4.1.  There was talk the google may leapfrog to 5.0, but no evidence out there to support this.  The big news is the $199 price point.  I can see lots of pickup for this as well as a good premove to block Apple in case its thinking of a 7-inch tablet.

But again..  All rumer.  We’ll see.

They made a previous announcement that these glasses would be available by the end of the year, but now say that these will not ship in 2012. I am very skeptical about the first release of these glasses living up to the concept video. Even though the Google[x] team states, “We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do”, I know that if it doesn’t do almost exactly what they showed, there will be some upset people in the blogosphere. I hope that Google delivers or I feel that the hype that will build around these glasses could hurt the idea of AR glasses in the future. Guess they had to do something to get a +1 on Apple.

Funny how it hasn’t taken long for others to create scenarios of how Google’s AR glasses may change the way we live and view the world.

Now, if you’re paranoid about your activity turn off your history on Google and YouTube, and any other Google service like picasa for which there are instructions here and here. And if you’re really paranoid, you can also consider getting rid of your Google accounts entirely.

BTW, if you do not already practice safe web browser, you may want to give this a read..

http://its.unca.edu/cyber-security-and-safe-web-surfing

{ Update: The chrome facebook exporter has been blocked }

Everyone has been talking about how Google plus is going after Facebook, but I also can see it threaten twitter is some respects because its allow 1 to many relationship as well as allowing people to follow without having to follow back. (at least that is the impression I get with ‘public’ posts)

But for those of you how are always want more, there is a post in GeekWord with instuctions for importing your Facebook friends into Google+.  Again, I will not do this, but hey, knock yourself out.

From GeekWord …

As we mentioned in our previous post, that Google+ is a challenge to Facebook, that already has got millions of users on its network – and according to this statistics average user on Facebook has 130 friends.

So, if you are using both Facebook and Google+ social networks and want to export your Facebook friends to Google+, then all you need is to install this Chrome extension (Facebook Friend Exporter) which is created by a Google+ user Mohamed Mansour.

How does it work?

After installing the extension, an ‘Export Friends’ button will be added to your Facebook toolbar, just click that button and it will begin the process of exporting your Facebook friends.

There are two methods of exporting your friends:

* CSV file (if you have many friends, greater than 500, it will be very slow)
* Gmail Contacts (It will place them into a folder called “Imported from Facebook”)

Simple isn’t it? Please share your views with us about this important extension by commenting in the box below.

Then just as fast as I say people being added, it stopped.  I’m guessing they turned off the new invites.  So those of you who decided not to act on that invite you saw in your email box, well, I guess you will have to wait a bit longer.  I would expect too long though.  Perhaps a few weeks tops.  For now, I’m going to keep using Google+ and see how it works for me.  The one thing I like right off… I get a fresh start!

We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you all for your interest!

For any who wish to leave, please remember you can always exit and take your data with you by using Google Takeout.

It’s your data, your relationships, your identity.

+Bradley Horowitz

See the videos when available at the WebGL Camp Youtube Channel .

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7NmtWFCP18

Neil Trevett

April 28th was the first WebGL Meetup here in the Bay area with a great mix of industry titans to garage developers. Managed by the Khronos group, WebGL is a web-based graphics library that extends the capability of the JavaScript programming language to allow it to generate interactive 3D graphics within any compatible web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari).

Web3D veteran and fellow Meetup co-organizer Tony Parisi introduced Neil Trevett, President of Khronos & VP Mobile Content at NVIDIA, who presented on ‘What is WebGL?’

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy3uFupx5CM

Henrik Bennetsen gave a product demonstration on OurBricks. Built on WebGL, OurBricks lets you discover, interact with, and share 3D content right in your browser. Think of it as a 3D warehouse where you can freely examine the model and much more. A great site for 3D modelers that want to share their work with others. A proper write up on OurBricks will be coming soon, but do check out their website and the video below.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XpqL_fDmHM

Closing demonstrations came from Kenneth Russell, software engineer at Google working on support for WebGL and related 3D graphics technologies in the Chrome browser. Kenneth shared a variety of WebGL demos from this site.

Kenneth shared the example in the video below to which a member of the audience responded, “that is my demo!” Yes, Aleksandar Rodic was in the house to explain his amazing looking demo. Check it out with a WebGL enabled browser here.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EdivotNkGc

Visiting scholar from Denmark Ates Gursimsek had this nice write up.  For those interested in WebGL in the SF/Bay area, join the meetup group and see you at the next event.