Android announced its Developer Preview 2 yesterday which focuses on additional features and changes on top of last month’s original preview. The new preview comes after the 12L feature drop was moved to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) last week, enabling developers to take advantage of over 250+ million large-screen Android devices. Android 13 … continue reading
Bluetooth SIG unveiled the next generation LE Audio standard that will enhance Bluetooth audio performance, add support for hearing aids and enable Audio Sharing. LE Audio can operate on two operation modes including Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) radio and Bluetooth Classic Radio (BR/EDR). “Extensive listening tests have shown that LC3 will provide improvements in audio … continue reading
Qualcomm has announced a new AI Fund to invest in startups utilizing artificial intelligence. The company is committing up to $100 million to the fund. According to Qualcomm, the fund will be focused on “startups that share the vision of on-device AI becoming more powerful and widespread, with an emphasis on those developing new technology … continue reading
Since updates can be expensive for device manufacturers, Android is separating the vendor implementation from the core Android framework. This will allow platform and vendor components to be updated independently. First, Android needed to isolate the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), which provides an interface between device-agnostic code and device-specific hardware implementations. According to Android, HALs … continue reading
Google is adding new features and bug fixes to its Internet of Things development platform. The company revealed a recent update to the platform, Android Things Developer Preview 3. “This preview is part of our commitment to provide regular updates to developers who are building Internet of Things (IoT) products with our platform. Android developers … continue reading
The world of Internet-connected devices targeted at children is a magical one. Toy dinosaurs can learn and communicate with a growing child, teddy bears can transmit messages overseas to military parents, and talking dolls can communicate with children via speech recognition software. But this connectedness comes with a price. Recent hacks on IoT toys are … continue reading
University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers created a Passive Wi-Fi system that demonstrates how it’s possible to generate Wi-Fi transmissions using 10,000x less power than other Wi-Fi chipsets, and 1,000x less power than Bluetooth Low Energy and ZigBee. “Passive Wi-Fi transmissions can be decoded on off-the-shelf smartphones and Wi-Fi chipsets over distances of … continue reading
Some top technology companies are teaming up in order to expand virtual reality’s reach. Acer/Starbreeze, Facebook Google, HTC, Samsung and Sony have formed the Global Virtual Reality Association (GVRA). Together, they will work on developing and sharing best practices for the industry. “The GVRA is a necessary first step toward ensuring great VR experiences for … continue reading
Humans can easily identify objects down to the very last pixel, and Facebook AI Research (FAIR) wants to push its machine vision capabilities and get machines to understand images and objects at the pixel level too. To do so, FAIR has introduced new algorithms and frameworks this week. Recently, FAIR has been designing new techniques … continue reading
If a flurry of startup activity is any indication, the Internet of Things is upon us. And yes, there are real-world big-money IoT projects out there gaining traction—though they may be outnumbered by hobbyist Arduino mods and IFTTT-connected light switches. However, if you haven’t gotten on board yet, you haven’t missed much. Platform manufacturers are … continue reading
Google has released a new API designed to retrieve data from an authenticated user’s Contacts. Previously, developers had to make multiple calls to the Google+ API and Contacts API. The new People API is designed to provide developers with new protocols and technologies, and it aims to eventually replace the Contacts API. With the People … continue reading
Google has announced Eddystone, an open-source Bluetooth LE beacon format for developers to integrate into cross-platform applications. Eddystone defines a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) message format for proximity beacon messages, supporting multiple frame types for various application use cases on Android, iOS or other mobile platforms. Google is launching two new APIs along with Eddystone—the … continue reading
