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The Turkish government has followed through on a threat to block YouTube from within its borders.
The action, which comes a week after the country blocked Twitter, was “another desperate and depressing move by Turkey,” according to Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission.
It began on Thursday in reaction to the posting of a conversation apparently between Turkey’s foreign minister, intelligence chief and a senior member of the armed forces that concerned a possible or theoretical attack against militants in neighboring Syria.
“It’s like the first wave of the Twitter blocking that happened last week,” said Doug Madory at Internet monitoring company Renesys. The company said several of its remote systems in the country were unable to access the Google-run website several hours after Turkey’s telecommunications authority said it would block the site.
Twitter was blocked after the micro-blogging service was used to spread links to a video that appears to implicate Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a corruption scandal.
It began with blocking the site through DNS (domain name system), the servers that translate the youtube.com domain name to the numeric Internet address used by computers to communicate. When Turkish users figured out they could sidestep the DNS restrictions by switching to use Google’s DNS service, the government moved to block access to that.
Thursday’s blocking of YouTube appears to working the same way with restrictions being placed on the DNS entry for the site, said Doug Madory at Renesys.
Google DNS has since become available again in Turkey but Twitter remains blocked, said Madory. //PCWorld
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HTC 
After a story in The Atlantic on Thursday stirred the iPhone vs Android rivalry waters, revealing that Google engineers were completely surprised by Steve Jobs’ original iPhone announcement in early 2007, deciding to ditch a BlackBerry-like prototype in favor of what was to become the HTC G1/Dream, OSNews (via 9to5mac) provided a comment made on the site on the same matter in mid July 2012 by former Android engineer Dianne Hackborn that disputes these events in a similar story that appeared on the website last year.
According to Hackborn, the decision to ditch Sooner in favor of Dream was made before the iPhone announcement and was “not such a huge upheaval,” as Google engineers were developing both products in parallel. “I don’t recall the exact dates, but I believe the decision to drop Sooner was well before the iPhone announcement,” Hackborn wrote, “though we continued to use it for quite a while internally for development, since it was the only semi-stable hardware platform we had.”
As Hackborn puts it, Sooner was the “risk-free” development device for Android OS, while Dream was a device for the future. The engineer further said that the differences in schedule were also caused by the fact that Sooner was based on an existing HTC device, while the Dream was a “completely new” handset “with a lot of things that had never been shipped before, at least by HTC (new Qualcomm chipset, sensors, touch screen, the hinge design, etc).” In the same comment, Hackborn also revealed Google spent a lot of time developing and stabilizing Android for the Dream, trying to make sure everything would work as expected when the device was to hit stores. “At the time we shipped the device, we even felt like we had to assume that what we shipped on the ROM was it, and we would never be able to deliver an update to it,” Hackborn added.
On the other hand, The Atlantic quoted several Google engineers working on the project including former Android head Andy Rubin, with all of them suggesting that the iPhone announcement made them realize the Sooner prototype would not measure up to the first iOS device, and convinced them to focus on launching a different first Android device than they had originally planned. // bgr.com
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iPhone
Back in 2005, Google had tasked teams of engineers with developing a secret mobile product that would position it to better compete with Microsoft. When 2007 rolled around, teams had worked 40- to 80- hour weeks for almost a year in an effort to revolutionize mobile phones. However, Apple was first out of the gate, revealing the iPhone on January 9th and forcing Google to rethink all the work that had been done. Fred Vogelstein recounts the outfit's post-iPhone Android development and a touchscreen Dream device built to make up for iOS shortcomings.
A hundred years ago this week, The Klingsbury Commitment kept AT&T from being another broken-up monopoly that fell under the US anti-trust laws of the early 20th century. Brian Fung takes a look at the letter (one of the first successful PR campaigns) that maintained the company's hold on telecommunications and the monopoly's ultimate fall.
by Steve LeVine, Quartz
200 mile range in an electric car? Well, Envia Systems certainly thought it possible and it struck a deal with GM to power vehicles like the Chevy Volt. One year later, the deal is void, the startup is being accused of misrepresenting its wares and two execs are battling each other in civil suits. So, what went wrong?
Via : Engadget
The Sculpture on the Moon (7,060 words)
by Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro, Slate
Paul van Hoerydonck is the only artist to have a sculpture on the moon.Slate's Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro tell the story of Fallen Astronautand the Apollo 15 mission that placed the 3-inch aluminum figure in a small dusty crater in 1971.


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The Google Experience Launcher, aka Google Search Launcher, gives you voice search capabilities without having to tap a button. Just say ''Ok, Google'' from any home screen and Google will look it up for you. Google Now can now be found as a home screen as well as via the old swipe up gesture. There's other changes to screen management and settings but you can discover those for yourself. It'll all add to the experience.
First, just download the following three APKs to your device (or PC, in which case you'll need to transfer them to your phone with a USB cable):
PreBuiltGmsCore (Google Play Services 4.0)
Velvet (Google Search)
GoogleHome (Google Launcher)
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher2
Download the three APKs, and install each one. / © AndroidPIT/Google
Once you've downloaded the three components, just install them in turn and you should be all set up with the Google Experience Launcher on your device. If your first experience with the Experience Launcher is a force close of the voice search, don't despair, all you need to do is change your default language for search, do a search and then change your voice search settings straight back to your original language. That's it.
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher3
Google search permissions and the new Settings. / © AndroidPIT/Google
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher4
The Google Experience Launcher tutorial upon first launch. / © AndroidPIT/Google
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher5
A long press brings up new options and Google Now lives on a home screen. / © AndroidPIT/Google
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher6
The new Holo design (left). Don't forget to set Google Search launcher as default. / © AndroidPIT/Google
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher7
If voice search crashes on your first try, just go into settings and Voice. / © AndroidPIT/Google
AndroidPIT Experience Launcher8
Change your language to something else, do a voice search, then change it back to your original language. And that's it, welcome to the Google Experience Launcher with voice search. / © AndroidPIT/Google

[Update: 12:30 PM 01.11.13 Berlin time]

The force close of voice search will need to be dealt with again every time you reboot your phone (via the same method). If this is too much for you and you have root access on your device, you can complete the following fix pulled from XDA Developers to permanently solve the voice search crash issue.
Download the libgoogle_recognizer_ini_I.zip from the XDA link above and extract the ZIP file. Move the ZIP file to /system/lib on your device and the next time you try voice search the force close you get should be the final crash you'll see.
Have you got the Google Experience Launcher on your device already? What other features have you found?
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Google has been slapped with a fine for breaking Spanish data protection laws with its privacy policy.
The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) said that Google does not provide enough details about its data collection, and imposed a €900,000 ($1.23M) punishment.
That's $400,000 each for three separate violations of the Organic Act on Data Protection (LOPD) — collecting information, sharing data, and not properly informing users. The AEPD called Google's privacy rules "indeterminate and unclear."
A new Google privacy policy went into effect on March 1, 2012. It consolidated about 70 cross-site guidelines into one, but also switched to one profile for users across all services, rather separate logins for applications like YouTube, Search, and Blogger. It's that account consolidation bit that has privacy advocates up in arms.
Google Search
The AEPD's action means that the California-based tech company must comply with Spanish data protection law and correct its practices ASAP.
A Google spokeswoman told PCMag that the company will be examining the Spanish watchdog's report to determine next steps.
"We've engaged fully with the Spanish DPA throughout this process to explain our privacy policy and how it allows us to create simpler, more effective services, and we'll continue to do so," she said in a statement.
Dutch and French officials have also spoken out against Google's practices. Late last month, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) accused the search giant of not adequately informing users about which personal data it collects and combines, and for what purpose.
Source : PCMag.com
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Spain’s data protection authority has fined Google €900,000 (US$1.2 million) and ordered the company to fall in line with the country’s data protection rules without delay.
Google
The Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), said Thursday that Google does not provide users enough information about the personal information it collects, and the purposes it uses it for. It also objects to Google combining data gathered from its various services in violation of local laws.
The Internet company does not, for example, inform Gmail users that the content of mails and attached files are filtered to insert tailored advertising, AEPD said.
Google is also said to keep the data for periods longer than permitted under local data laws. The company was fined €300,000 for each of three violations, AEPD said.
”The combination of data collected through different services widely exceeds the reasonable expectations of the majority of users, who are not aware of it and lose control of their own personal information,” AEPD said.
Google modified its privacy policy in March 2012, giving it the right to use personal data collected from one service on its other services as well, triggering criticism from privacy experts.
The investigation carried out by the AEPD has shown that Google illegally collects and processes personal information of both authenticated users, who have logged in with their Google accounts, and non-authenticated users, as well as “passive users” who have not requested Google’s services but access Web pages that include elements managed by the Internet company, the data protection authority said.
”Google collects personal information through nearly a hundred of services and products offered in Spain, in many cases not providing adequate information about what data is collected, what data is used for what purposes and without obtaining a valid consent of the data subjects,” AEPD said.
Via : PCWorld
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The search giant is planning to bring its streaming dongle to a number of international markets, according to Google's product management VP Mario Queiroz in an interview with Gigaom. He added that people will be "pleasantly surprised" by the scope of the expansion.
The idea is to persuade app publishers around the world to make their apps Chromecast-compatible, so that users will be able to access more content using the device.
"There will be an expectation from consumers that any and every app will be 'castable,'" Queiroz said.
To that end, an open SDK will be launched during 2014. Right now a preview is available to developers, but it's not yet possible to distribute apps with the functionality.
Source : Wired UK
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Gmail
Gmail recently announced a change to the way it handles images in your emails by default. You used to have to opt in to see images embedded in your incoming messages by clicking a “Display images below” or “Always display images from (address)” link at the top of each message. Now, all images in your messages will load automatically.
Google is hyping the enhanced security of this new way of doing things, primarily because all emailed images will now be cached on the company’s own servers. That means that when they’re opened, only Google will be able to see your IP address and device details, not some potential spammer or nefarious e-buddy. It also means that Google is now copying every image sent through Gmail to its own servers.
Some argue that this new “cache and load” approach will help keep you from being tracked by marketers. Others argue that it will allow marketers to track your habits even more effectively, in some cases letting them know when you’ve opened and read their messages.
Either way, there are clear benefits to the old way of opting in to view messages. You can decide what to open on a case-by-case basis, and it’ll make your inbox load a lot faster. It won’t keep all those images off Google’s servers, though. It’ll just hide them by default.
To switch back to “opt-in” images, just open the full-browser version of Gmail and do this:
1. Click on the Gear icon and select “Settings” from the drop-down menu.
2. In the “General” tab, scroll down to “External content.”
3. Click the radio button next to “Ask before displaying external content.”
Note: If you want to switch back to showing images by default, just choose the button next to “Always display external content (such as images) sent by trusted senders.”

Homepage Image: Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería/Flickr
Source : Wired
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Google may be in hot water with the Canadian Competition Bureau. The bureau announced it would be investigating the company in May, but more recent reports suggest it's not too happy with what the investigation has turned up.

 Documents filed to the Federal Court of Canada describe Google as controlling at least one market related to search and advertising, potentially raising anti-trust concerns. The documents also suggest Google may have engaged in a number of anti-competitive acts by manipulating search results to favor their own products, or preventing data export from the company's AdWords platform. If the acts are found to be anti-competitive, it would mean a violation of Canadian anti-trust laws, and potentially grave consequences for the search giant.

 This isn't the first time Google has faced regulatory scrutiny over its ad and search practices. In January of 2013, the company reached a settlement over similar claims by the US's Federal Trade Commission, which resulted in minor shifts in company practices. Those shifts were enough to halt ongoing suits in the international trade commission, although competitors like Yelp called the settlement "a missed opportunity." Judging by today's news, it seems as if Canada may not be satisfied either.
Source : Financial Post
Via : The Verge
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Apps Ops
Remember that "Apps Ops" feature Google snuck into Android 4.3? The company seems to have changed its mind. The feature was originally hidden, but when activated with a third party app it gave users the ability to pick and choose what data apps have access to -- blocking seemingly harmless flashlight apps from accessing your call history, GPS data or address book. Now, users upgrading to Android 4.4.2 are reporting that the permission management tool has disappeared. According to Google, the feature was deployed by mistake; it wasn't ready for consumers yet. Continuing to use the incomplete feature could reportedly generate errors in certain apps. It sounds reasonable, considering that the user had to download special software to activate the feature in the first place, but it's always disappointing when updating removes features, rather than improves them. Hopefully, a complete and public version of App Ops will be available soon.
Source : Reuters, EFF
Via : Engadget
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WildCat (above), a four-legged robot powered by a gasoline engine that can run at speeds of 15 miles per hour, is one of the devices developed by Waltham-based Boston Dynamics. Google announced Friday that it had purchased Boston Dynamic
BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat, and Atlas have joined Google’s growing robot menagerie.
Google confirmed Friday that it had completed the acquisition of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that has designed mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The Waltham-based company has gained an international reputation for machines that walk with an uncanny sense of balance and even — cheetahlike — run faster than the fastest humans.
It is the eighth robotics company that Google has acquired in the last half-year. Executives at the Internet giant are circumspect about what exactly they plan to do with their robot collection. But Boston Dynamics and its animal kingdom-themed machines bring significant cachet to Google’s robotic efforts, which are being led by Andy Rubin, the Google executive who spearheaded the development of Android, the world’s most widely used smartphone software
The deal is also the clearest indication yet that Google is intent on building a new class of autonomous systems that might do anything from warehouse work to package delivery and even elder care.
Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert, a former professor at MIT. It has not sold robots commercially, but has pushed the limits of mobile and off-road robotics technology, mostly for Pentagon clients like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Early on, the company also did consulting work for Sony on consumer robots like the Aibo robotic dog.
Boston Dynamics’ walking robots have a reputation for being extraordinarily agile, able to walk over rough terrain and handle surfaces that in some cases are challenging even for humans.
A video of one of its robots named BigDog shows a noisy, gas-powered, four-legged, walking robot that climbs hills, travels through snow, skitters precariously on ice and even manages to stay upright in response to a well-placed human kick. BigDog development started in 2003 in partnership with the British robot maker Foster-Miller, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Harvard.
The video has been viewed more than 15 million times since it was posted on YouTube in 2008.
More recently, Boston Dynamics distributed a video of a four-legged robot named WildCat, galloping in high-speed circles in a parking lot.
Although the videos frequently inspire comments that the robots will evolve into scary killing machines straight out of the “Terminator” movies, Raibert has said in the past that he does not consider his company to be a military contractor — it is merely trying to advance robotics technology. Google executives said the company would honor existing military contracts, but that it did not plan to move toward becoming a military contractor on its own.
Under a $10.8 million contract, Boston Dynamics is currently supplying DARPA with a set of humanoid robots named Atlas to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a two-year contest with a $2 million prize. The contest’s goal is creating a class of robots that can operate in natural disasters and catastrophes like the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima, Japan.
“Competitions like the DARPA Robotics Challenge stretch participants to try to solve problems that matter and we hope to learn from the teams’ insights around disaster relief,” Rubin said in a statement released by Google.
Boston Dynamics has also designed robots that can climb walls and trees as well as other two- and four-legged walking robots, a neat match to Rubin’s notion that “computers are starting to sprout legs and move around in the environment.”
A recent video shows a robot named Cheetah running on a treadmill. This year, the robot was clocked running 29 mph, surpassing the previous legged robot land speed record of 13.1 mph, set in 1999. That’s about 1 mph faster than Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 100-meter dash. But it’s far short of a real cheetah, which can hit 65 mph.
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Chromecast
The announcement of this new feature just comes on the heels of Chromecast gaining support for ten new apps, expanding the streaming device’s coverage quite considerably. While Google Play Movies and Music have long been supported as streaming sources, this new feature brings a bit of convenience to users.
When your Android smartphone or tablet is out of reach, simply go to the Google Play web page to get access to your uploaded media content. Look for the Cast icon in the web player and click it to immediately start streaming your movie or song to the TV via Chromecast. Now you can get access to more than 20 million songs, new release films and next-day TV releases from Google Play’s content offerings right on your TV even without your phone.

Download: Google Cast extension for Chrome
SOURCE: Google 
 
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Google could launch 'Nexus TV' Android
Google isn't giving up its living room ambitions. The company is said to be working on a "Nexus TV" device that will run Android, stream video from services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, and play a selection of video games. The rumor comes from The Information's Amir Efrati, who cites an anonymous Google employee. The device is said to be ready for launch as soon as the first half of next year, according to the report.
Rumors of a Google-made Android set top box go back to July of this year, when The Wall Street Journal reported that such a device was demoed by Andy Rubin behind closed doors at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Sources told the paper at the time that the box included a Kinect-like motion sensor and could be controlled with an Android smartphone. Today's report from The Information corroborates these details (though a motion sensor is not mentioned), and adds that a purpose-built touchpad remote could be included with the set-top box. Google reportedly showed off a version of the box to developers as recently as this fall.
It's said that the device will not support live broadcast, which would mean Google could avoid the hassle of trying to bring traditional content providers on board. That's a task that's so far proved impossible for other companies: Intel abandoned its efforts to launch an internet set-top box after failing to secure such deals, and it's rumored that an Apple television device has been delayed for similar reasons. If the Nexus TV reports are accurate, Google seems to be pursuing a similar strategy as Amazon, which is rumored to have a set-top box of its own set for next year.
Google has launched a number of products to attempt to gain a foothold in the living room, starting with the ill-fated (but still living) Google TV operating system that manufacturers built into smart TVs and other devices. It later announced the expensive Nexus Q (which never officially went on sale), and this year it began selling a small HDMI dongle called the Chromecast, which streams from just a few services and costs $35. The latter has seen some success, but it's a device with a simple feature set. A fully-fledged Nexus TV set-top box that runs Android would be in a different category — though today's report suggests it will be "aggressively priced."
Via: The Verge
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Surveillance has changed in the age of the internet  
What does privacy mean in the age of the internet? Nations, jobs, lives and families depend on the web for their security and prosperity, and we have all come to rely on a handful of giant corporations. But while it was pretty easy to work out if Royal Mail had opened your letters, it must be taken on trust that Google, Facebook, Twitter and others have left your emails and instant messages unread. Yet as Barack Obama put it, 100 per cent privacy is simply not compatible with 100 per cent security. And those web corporations depend for much of their revenue on analysing your data anyway.
In America the National Security Agency (NSA), and Britain’s own GCHQ, have been accused of using the web to spy on citizens to an unprecedented extent. In the process they've made many users distrust those web giants and today, in a joint open letter, eight of the biggest said that what the American government had destroyed, it should help to rebuild. They presented a plan for regulation of spying - arguably a contradiction in terms - and sought to paint themselves as more sinned against than sinning. “People won’t use technology they don’t trust,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, wrote. “Governments have put this trust at risk, and governments need to help restore it.”
On some levels, this is clearly about preserving the economic growth that Google and Microsoft foster; on another, it is about those very same companies seeking to retain the trust upon which their businesses rely for their vast profits. It is novel, to say the least, for technology businesses to suggest that they know how best our security services should keep us safe, but they may also have an interest in that too.
It has become compulsory to call Edward Snowden’s leaks from America’s NSA ‘revelations’, when in fact they probably reveal only what a sceptical mind might have concluded after a moment’s thought: just as the web has industrialised the scale of communications, video on demand, entertainment, photo-sharing, porn and more, it has has offered our security services the chance to spy on an industrial scale too. Faced with the choice between taking a gamble on which individuals to place under intense surveillance, or simply knowing more about everybody, state security services took an obvious decision. It’s a moot point whether this took place on a ubiquitous or merely a widespread scale, but either way legislation built for a bygone era was all that restrained them. It became almost effortless to discover who had made a phone call, from where and to whom, and technically it was not much harder to listen in.
President Obama has already initiated a review of the NSA’s practices, but under his government the policies that the Bush administration initiated have continued apace, with this trend being just one that Snowden says contributed to his profound disillusionment. There is no question that - as with so many things - there is a generational disconnect: while the middle-aged largely trust the state, younger people do so only to a lesser extent, assuming that online communication is easily accessed. It in part explains the rise of apps such as Snapchat, where messages are automatically destroyed once they are read. 
Source : Telegraph
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Eight companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and LinkedIn have formed an alliance called the Reform Government Surveillance group. Although usually fierce competitors, the group have come together in agreement over the U.S. government's spying programs -- brought to light by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden -- and have formally requested "wide-scale changes" to the regime.
Snowden's revelations have included alleged wiretapping, the storage of phone call records illegally, fibre-optic cable infiltration used to monitor communication on an international scale, and the use of malware to monitor computer networks by the U.S. agency.

 According to the latest document leak, the NSA is gathering close to 5 billion records a day on cellular devices worldwide. The Washington Post says large amounts of domestic data is "incidentally" recorded, which allows the agency to track millions of people worldwide based on how and where mobile devices are used.
On the alliance's website, an open letter to President Obama and Congress signed by the firms acknowledges that governments have "a duty to protect their citizens," but argues that Snowden's information leaks over the practices of the NSA and U.S. government in wholesale spying have highlighted "the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide."
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the revelations show a "real need for greater disclosure and new limits on how governments collect information." Brad Smith, Executive Vice President of Legal & Corporate Affairs at Microsoft said that "surveillance should address specific, suspicious targets under defined legal process rather than bulk collection of Internet communications."
Marissa Meyer, CEO of Yahoo, said "recent revelations about government surveillance activities have shaken the trust of our users, and it is time for the United States government to act to restore the confidence of citizens around the world." Google CEO and chairman Larry Page commented that user data security was "critical" for firms, but this has been "undermined by the apparent wholesale collection of data, in secret and without independent oversight, by many governments around the world."
"The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual -- rights that are enshrined in our Constitution," the letter states. "This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It's time for a change."
The U.S. President agrees to an extent. During a recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball, Obama said that he plans to "propose some self-restraint on the NSA," and push for "some reforms that that can give people more confidence." At the interview, Obama said:
"All of us spend more and more of our lives in cyberspace. We've got to be in there in some way to protect the American people, even as we're making sure the government doesn't abuse it. The Snowden exposures have identified some areas of legitimate concern, but some of it has also been highly sensationalized.
The people at the NSA generally are looking out for the safety of the American people. They are not interested in reading your emails or text messages, and that's not something that's done."
The company alliance states that they are all taking steps to keep user data secure, including the deployment of encryption technology to scupper "unauthorized surveillance on our networks," and plan to push back government requests to ensure they are both legal and reasonable.
Source : ZDNet
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Android Logo
It was only a matter of time before Google's Android platform joined the television rumor game. However, unlike Apple's iOS before it, the recent batch of rumors surrounding the search giant don't have Google allegedly making a physical television set of its own.
No, it's just a set-top box that we're all postulating about. At least, that's the rumor that's been thrown out by the brand-new tech news website The Information (subscription required), which suggests that said set-top box — based on Android, of course — will likely be available for purchase from Google in the first half of next year.
The device is said to be able to handle a number of different streaming services – think Hulu Plus, Netflix, YouTube (obviously), et cetera — and give a purchaser living room access to some gaming as well. As for just how powerful the set-top box will be, gaming-wise, we don't know (but we'd love to find out!)
The news echoes previous rumors from the Wall Street Journal months ago, which mentioned at the time that Google was also planning to stick a video camera and motion sensor into the set-top box — presumably, to make Google Hangouts just that much easier (and bite the thumb at rival Skype, which currently enjoys living room success as the de facto communication service on Microsoft's Xbox gaming consoles).
The latest batch of rumors don't explicitly call out this motion sensor by name, which gives us pause to wonder whether Google has rethought that part of the device.
The rumored purchasing window dovetails nicely with additional news that Google is planning a big Google TV announcement at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Additionally, it comes right as Amazon is rumored to be making its own set-top box as well, likely for release in 2014 as well.
As for whether the alleged Google set-top box will be unveiled at CES, we're not sure. We're also not sure what one might call it. It's also rumored that Google will be rebranding this Web-friendly set-top box as "Nexus TV," an update from previous rumors that had Google calling the device "Android TV."
Source : PCMag
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Amazon.com made headlines this week with the announcement of Amazon Prime Air, but it isn't the only company that's testing delivery drones.
Reports this week say UPS and Google are two other companies that are also testing delivery drones for their services.
Unnamed sources say UPS is "testing and evaluating" different ways that it could add drones to its fleet of brown delivery vehicles, according to The Verge. Though UPS has not confirmed this report, the company did not dismiss it either.
"The commercial use of drones is an interesting technology and we’ll continue to evaluate it," UPS said in a statement. "UPS invests more in technology than any other company in the delivery business, and we’re always planning for the future." 
In Silicon Valley, Google is also testing delivery drones. Reports from as far back as February by news site 9to5Google say Google has been testing "mini-drone delivery systems" that it would like to use with Google Shopping Express, a same-day delivery service available in San Francisco and surrounding areas.
The Google drones come from Google X, the same department that is responsible for Google Glass and the company's self-driving cars, according to 9to5Google.
Some day soon, we'll likely receive our packages from drones; but first, government regulations need to change.

Source : latimes.com
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Android 4.4
Only five weeks after the Android 4.4 flagship Nexus 5 started shipping, Google has released an over the air update that addresses some of the flaws found in the software. If you have the Nexus 4, 5, or 7, get ready for Android 4.4.1 to hit your device.
When the Nexus 5 was launched, it felt like an amazing piece of hardware that was somehow left unfinished before releasing it to the public. There were some strange bugs in audio, the camera was almost unusable if you needed a quick photo, and even if you took your time the chances of getting a great shot compared to other smartphones wasn’t particularly high.
There was also some odd spacing issues in the UI where icons didn’t line up, and when you put all of these things together it was frustrating to see a device with so much potential fall short. Fortunately, Google has acted swiftly to fix these problems by releasing Android 4.4.1 to Nexus devices.
Source : Geek.com

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Google

 Andy Rubin, who cofounded and then led the Android mobile platform up until this year, is turning his passion for robots into a new "moonshot" venture for the Mountain View, Calif., tech company, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Though few details have been revealed by Rubin or Google, the robotics effort is targeted at manufacturers and aims to improve the way Google and other companies assemble and deliver products.

To accomplish this, Rubin is working with seven robotics companies that Google has acquired over the past half-year. Rubin is also hiring roboticists and is bringing on other Google programmers to expand the effort, according to the report.
A windshield wiper that can detect rain and activate itself is an example of the kinds of robotic models Rubin envisions, according to the report.
But it may be a while before anyone sees the results of Rubin's robotics effort.
“Like any moonshot, you have to think of time as a factor,” Rubin told the newspaper. “We need enough runway and a 10-year vision.”
Source : latimes.com
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Motorola demonstrates it is just as bad as Google
It looks like the new Google-powered Motorola has absorbed some of the worst parts of the Mountain View company’s ability to sell things, as two different attempts at a Cyber Monday sale come crashing down around them.
Despite rave reviews, the Moto X isn’t terribly popular when compared to the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4. It’s a fantastic phone that deserves some attention from the world, but it’s starting to look like the only people in Motorola’s way are the folks at Motorola.
The Moto X launch was plagued with an AT&T exclusivity for their unique MotoMaker service, which is still today missing the amazing wooden backs that were shown off at launch. For their Cyber Monday promotion, Motorola grabbed a lot of attention by announcing 30% off accessories and $150 off all versions of the Moto X. Unfortunately, actually reaching the checkout is turned out to be a lot of trouble.
The first attempt at the Black Friday sale didn’t happen at all. The Motorola website crashed, and MotoMaker was broken for most of the day. When everything was finally fixed, Motorola announced via an official apology from CEO Dennis Woodside that they were going to open the sale back up for two more days in order to allow as many people access to the store as possible. This seemed like a great way to make up for the website failure, right until the sale opened up today.
Source : Geek.com
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