Google welcomes the future of mobile VR with its $79 Daydream View VR headset — from techcrunch.com by Lucas Matney
Excerpt:
Today at its October hardware/software/everything event, the company showed off its latest VR initiatives including a Daydream headset. The $79 Daydream View VR headset looks quite a bit different than other headsets on the market with its fabric exterior.
Clay Bavor, head of VR, said the design is meant to be more comfortable and friendly. It’s unclear whether the cloth aesthetic is a recommendation for the headset reference design as Xiaomi’s Daydream headset is similarly soft and decidedly design-centric.
The headset and the Google Daydream platform will launch in November.
Here’s the Google Pixel — from techcrunch.com by Brian Heater
Excerpt:
While the event is positioned as hardware first, this is Google we’re talking about here, and as such, the real focus is software. The company led the event with talk about its forthcoming Google Assistant AI, and as such, the Pixel will be the first handset to ship with the friendly voice helper. As the company puts it, “we’re building hardware with the Google Assistant it its core. ”
Google Home will go on sale today for $129, shipping November 4 — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois
Excerpt:
Google Home, the company’s answer to Amazon’s Echo, made its official debut at the Google I/O developer conference earlier this year. Since then, we’ve heard very little about Google’s voice-activated personal assistant. Today, at Google’s annual hardware event, the company finally provided us with more details.
Google Home will cost $129 (with a free six-month trial of YouTube red) and go on sale on Google’s online store today. It will ship on November 4.
Google’s Mario Queiroz today argued that our homes are different from other environments. So like the Echo, Google Home combines a wireless speaker with a set of microphones that listen for your voice commands. There is a mute button on the Home and four LEDs on top of the device so you know when it’s listening to you; otherwise, you won’t find any other physical buttons on it.
Google Working with Netflix, HBO & Hulu for Daydream Content— from vrfocus.com by Kevin Joyce
#madebygoogle reveals services ready and on the way to support Google Daydream
Excerpt:
Google’s #madebygoogle press conference today revealed some significant details about the company’s forthcoming plans for virtual reality (VR). Daydream is set to launch later this year, and along with the reveal of the first ‘Daydream Ready’ smartphone handset, Pixel, and Google’s own version of the head-mounted display (HMD), Daydream View, the company revealed some of the partners that will be bringing content to the device.
Google officially unveils $649 Pixel phone with unlimited storage; $129 Google Home — from cnbc.com by Anita Balakrishnan
Google Unveils ‘Home,’ Embraces Aggressive Shift To Hardware — from forbes.com by Matt Drange
Excerpt:
You can add to the seemingly never-ending list of things that Google is deeply involved in: hardware production.
On Tuesday, Google made clear that hardware is more than just a side business, aggressively expanding its offerings across a number of different categories. Headlined by the much-anticipated Google Home and a lineup of smartphones, dubbed Pixel, the announcements mark a major shift in Google’s approach to supplementing its massively profitable advertising sales business and extensive history in software development.
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Aimed squarely at Amazon’s Echo, Home is powered by more than 70 billion facts collected by Google’s knowledge graph, the company says. By saying, “OK, Google” Home quickly pulls information from other websites, such as Wikipedia, and gives contextualized answers akin to searching Google manually and clicking on a couple links. Of course, Home is integrated with Google’s other devices, so adding items to your shopping list, for example, are easily pulled up via Pixel. Home can also be programmed to read back information in your calendar, traffic updates and the weather. “If the president can get a daily briefing, why shouldn’t you?” Google’s Rishi Chandra asked when he introduced Home on Tuesday.
A comment from DC:
More and more, people are speaking to a device and expect that device to do something for them. How much longer, especially with the advent of chatbots, before people expect this of learning-related applications?
Natural language processing, cognitive computing, and artificial intelligence continue their march forward.
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