Well folks today our fearless internet overlord Google made some fresh announcements.
NEW Nexus 7 tablet will be available in 3 models: the 16gb Wifi for 229, the 32 GB wifi model for 269, and 32 GB LTE model for 349. The Wifi Model will start shipping on July 30th, with the LTE model shipping in “coming weeks”.
Upgraded specs from the last one (which ran pretty damn nice for the $$):
Also announced today brand new version of jelly bean. Version 4.3 is available today for all google devices and the samsung galaxy.
Key Features:
New to Android 4.3: advanced multi-user support, bringing in “restricted profiles”. Restricted profiles lets parents limit what their child’s account can do. (Same thing the kindle has recently been advertising. Why you say? Cause kindle is android based silly.)
Bluetooth Smart, or Bluetooth low-energy.
OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics system, allowing for considerably more detail in games; according to Hugo, they’re the first to support it.
Watching 1080p content on a tablet is great, but most of the content you get today is actually standard definition. This is because the lack of DRM. With Android 4.3, Google’s introducing hardware-level encryption for DRM. The first group Google’s partnering with this is Netflix, allowing you to stream 1080p netflix content to your Android device.
The original Nexus 7, the nexus 4, the galaxy nexus, and the nexus 10 will start to get Android 4.3 today.
Another important update comes to the Google Play store which will begin carrying a comprehensive collection of text books from all 5 major publishing houses. Books can be purchased, or rented for 6 months at a time. Text books will be available in early august.
BUT, the biggest announcement is Chromecast. Chromecast is a tiny, itty-bitty dongle that runs a simplified version of Chrome OS. Chromecast integrates into the apps you already use on your tablet, phone, or PC. You push a chromecast button, and it pushes that video to your TV. It’s like Apple’s airplay. Chromecast will play friendly with the iPhone, not just Android. You can continue to use your phone independently; once the video is playing on your TV, you can use your phone for other tasks. Even if you sleep the phone, the video keeps playing. You can pause/skip videos from the lockscreen. If you’ve got multiple devices all connected to Chromecast, Chromecast won’t be tied to any of them. You can pause on your iPhone, for example, pick up your tablet, and immediately take control and begin playing from the same place.
On a side note to the Chomecast stuff. Myself and another of other dev’s I work with spent a good hour today chatting about this part of the announcement. The conversation was a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. At first we were all stoked simply because we had postalized that Google might announce this type of functionality because its been sorely missing for far too long. But as we spoke more about how it worked and read in between the tech lines our excitement faded as a feeling of “MEH, its pretty cool but what about this, what about that..” set in. Its a HUGE step up from the ill fated Google Q that was a major POS but the Chromecast is still missing actual screen mirroring. WHY GOOGLE WHY!!!!! So at this point your gonna have to wait for ALL of your favorite app developers to add the Chrome Play button to their apps BEFORE you can play Angry Birds on the big screen but hey for $35 its worth it if you don’t already have a smart TV, playstation, Xbox or Apple TV hooked up (Which covers about 90% of the population).
All that being said, I will let you know in three days time after mine arrives….HA
Once again your weekly collection of Mobile News is brought to you by our friend over at Mutual Mobile
This week, Instagram integrates video to its app in an attempt to defend itself against Vine. But is it a smart move? Plus: new data from Forrester on Glass, a first look at iOS 7, and more.
News and Insights
Video Killed The Instagram Star – TechCrunch, In an attempt to overcome Vine, Instagram has added video. But is it a smart move?
Apple Scores $30M iPad Deal With L.A. Schools – Mashable, Los Angeles public schools plan to equip every student with the device by 2014. (If you wanna get a better understanding of what this means to education http://www.redefiningliteracy.com/what-is-ilit)
As always, we bring this to you from our good friends over at Mutual Mobile.
As Apple’s WWDC kicks off this week, Ive-inspired flat interfaces in iOS 7 abound. Is this the end of skeuomorphism? Plus: why mobile web is top of mind for digital customer experience initiatives (spoiler answer: cause it needs ALOT of help).
As always, brought to you by our friends at Mutual Mobile
Bold predictions ran amok in this week’s mobile headlines: from brain-computer interfaces, to Google Glass being chastised for “dorkiness”, to Blackberry’s CEO claiming the death of the tablet (for the record, we think he’s wrong).
Brought to you by the letter M, and our friends over at Mutual Mobile
This week IDC announced that smartphones outnumbered feature phones in worldwide shipments: a true turning point for the mobile industry. Plus, Apple’s WWDC sold out in under 2 minutes. What are iOS developers most excited for this year?
Original post brought to you by our friends at Mutual Mobile
The wearable market continues to dominate tech news and consumer interest. This week, we dive deeper into the bewildering smartwatch market, and learn more about Google Glass. Plus: whose responsibility is mobile?
(Comment by Amcr: I don’t agree with Gartner on this one. Yes hybrid is handy, and yes it makes for a single code base to work with however like a digital recording versus an analog one, native is best. There is a gap in the functionality, flow and performence of hybrid apps. You often need to use all kinds of silly frameworks in order to have some of the cool elements that are present in a native application. The bottom line is this. If you dont have two piles of cash to spend on native apps (one pile for IOS and one pile for android) than a hybrid application is the choice. If on the other hand, you have the cash, and want performence then native is the way to go. The outside of your budget, the next major variable that will determine which route is best for your app is function. What does your app do? Is it a simple information consumption app? Lots of query’s, list views and general business logic sort of stuff? If so then yes hybrid might be a good choice. BUT!! If you are looking to push the boundaries of what a user interface can be or how data might be transformed, then native is place to be.)
QR code for the URL of the English Wikipedia Mobile main page
In the social media age a greater emphasis has been placed on interacting with customers as opposed to selling them on your products. One interesting way that people are doing this is with QR codes. If you’re not familiar with QR codes,which are also known as Quick Response Codes, they’re small postage stamp sized pieces of code which were initially developed in order to help track vehicles during the manufacturing process. But businesses outside the automotive industry have been using them for sometime now. They’ve become popular in the restaurant industry as a way to engage with customers, as restaurant pagers had before them. A recent Nation’s Restaurant News article provided five tips for getting the most out of QR codes. Continue »