Category: Google

Like, What Even is a Photo? ⇢

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Allison Johnson, writing at The Verge, about the just-announced Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro’s take on mobile photography:

In its eight years of existence, Google Photos has shifted its official mission just once: from “home for all your photos and videos” to “home for all your memories,” says Google Photos VP Shimrit Ben-Yair.

That tagline switch starts to make a lot more sense when you look at the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro. Inside the new phones, Google Photos will see some of its biggest changes to date, all designed to refine your memories. There’s a lot to be proven about how well the new features work, and there are the usual messy questions to ask about the role of generative AI in photography. But you can start to see very clearly how Google is shifting from saving “your photos” to cataloging your messy, complicated memories.

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10 Years After Google Reader ⇢

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David Pierce, writing at The Verge:

There was a sign in the Google Reader team’s workspace at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. “Days Since Cancellation,” it read, with a number below: zero. It was always zero.

This was in 2006 or so, back when Google Reader was still growing. Back when it still existed at all. Google’s feed-reading tool offered a powerful way to curate and read the internet and was beloved by its users. Reader launched in 2005, right as the blogging era went mainstream; it made a suddenly huge and sprawling web feel small and accessible and helped a generation of news obsessives and super-commenters feel like they weren’t missing anything. It wasn’t Google’s most popular app, not by a long shot, but it was one of its most beloved.

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The Pixel Tablet ⇢

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Dan Seifert:

The looks of the Pixel Tablet are relatively generic. It has an 11-inch, 16:10, 2560 x 1600 pixel LCD display, even bezels all around, and a matte back. It comes in three colors: white, dark green, and light pink, with the dark green model featuring a black bezel. Though it looks like plastic from a distance, the Pixel Tablet has an aluminum frame with a nanotexture coating, not unlike what Google did with the Pixel 5 smartphone.

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Chromium Boasts Battery Gains for MacBook Users ⇢

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François Doray, a software developer on the Chrome team:

With the latest release of Chrome, we’ve made it possible to do more on your MacBook on a single charge thanks to a ton of optimizations under the hood. In our testing, we found that you can browse for 17 hours or watch YouTube for 18 hours on a MacBook Pro (13", M2, 2022) And with Chrome’s Energy Saver mode enabled, you can browse an additional 30 minutes longer on battery. Of course, we care deeply about all our users, not just those with the latest hardware. That’s why you’ll also see performance gains on older models as well.

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Guided Frame ⇢

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Steven Aquino, writing at Forbes, about a feature that shipped with the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro:

A marquee feature of the Pixel 7 series is what Google calls Guided Frame. The feature, an interplay of hardware and software, works with Android’s TalkBack screen reader to help guide a Blind or low vision person to get into the best positioning for a good selfie. Guided Frame also smartly leverages haptic feedback to assist in confirmation that you did the right thing. For many disabled people, the double dose of sensory input — clinically known as bimodal support, referring to two forms of sensory experience — is not only technologically adroit. Haptics is one way to make use of a device’s panoply of sensors, but the practical application these little buzzes have for people who can’t rely on pure visual feedback is not superfluous. It’s actually extremely useful.

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Free Legacy Google Suite Accounts Coming to End July 1 ⇢

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Google Support:

If you have the G Suite legacy free edition, you need to upgrade to a paid Google Workspace subscription to keep your services. The G Suite legacy free edition will no longer be available starting July 1, 2022.

To maintain your services and accounts, review the information below and upgrade by May 1, 2022. Upgrading to Google Workspace takes just a few steps with no disruption to your users. After you upgrade you can use your new subscription at no cost until at least July 1, 2022.

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