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Android coming to wearables

googleblog.blogspot.com

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Re: Android coming to wearables

#71

Post by agumonkey »

svenkatesh wrote: post #19
wvenable wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's Law will eventually catch up. The Pebble is currently the PalmPilot of smartwatches; perfectly suited to the current state of the art. However, progress being what it is, eventually the technology will be good enough that Android (or iOS) on a smartwatch will become the better solution.

Moore's law is about transistor count; what does that have to do with battery life?

More transistor density => lower watt consumption => better battery life or form factor, whatever you prefer.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#72

Post by kh_hk »

The last time I used Google Now was too scared to use it ever again. I don't want to report my location, see cool pictures of my surroundings, or know about the events of my city. It's not just only about the surveillance, it's about the future. The connected future, the uninteresting one. The one on which one must "opt-in" or just stay out. Personally, I do not get Google Now cards. When they are relevant, they are depressing.

Hopefully this stage of the future is just a step into a more positive and fulfilling one.

That being said, give me a rooted version of this device where I can install a custom OS that allows me to use it as a computer and I am in.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#73

Post by JetSpiegel »

hanley wrote: post #42
Kiro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an argument against all smartwatches, not just Google. Nevertheless, I think you're wrong. I have a Pebble and it has changed my life. I will never leave the house without a wearable on my arm again.

In what ways has it changed your life?

A lighter wallet and another thing needing charge.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#75

Post by chillingeffect »

Just another crapshoot from a research institution trying to divest as its core business decays.

Google is showing evidence they can't predict the future very well and won't sustain development in shaky fields.

Instead, they're going for PR and military research projects, like IBM and Veridian Dynamics.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#76

Post by moonka »

apendleton wrote: post #26

The key to the success of these things will be the ability to get information from the display without having to touch it. At first I figured this would mean an always-on display (so, e-ink, I guess), but this clearly isn't that, and yet they don't seem to turn the displays on in the videos (though I'm sure they're all fake). I wonder if you could do something with the accelerometer that would be good enough? Like, i…

The pebble is always on, but the backlight can be set to turn on when you flick your wrist to look at it. While it could definitely benefit from a more sensitive accelerometer, it works well enough 90% of the time.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#77

Post by lutusp »

maxerickson wrote: post #64
lutusp wrote: post #32

I hope you're all paying attention to the trend this represents, a trend fueled by ever-smaller and more intimate Android devices. Pretty soon the term "Android" may become literal.

What do 'intimate' digital devices have to do with humanoid robots?

I's saying this trend toward a closer and closer association between computers and people -- beginning with a huge, noisy room with lab-coat-wearing attendants who accepted your stack of 80-column cards through a little window, sort of like a bank (my first exposure to computers years ago) -- and now moving toward blurring the line between the computer and its "wearer", and given a number of neurological experiments in which the line between the computer and the human is blurred, I can see the handwriting on the wall.

That sentence was way too long, but I think you get the idea. :)

Re: Android coming to wearables

#78

Post by de_dave »

justinph wrote: post #21

Those things look huge. Until "smart watches" can be made smaller and lighter, the adoption rate will be abysmal. Seriously, those things are electric hockey pucks with straps.

Saw a new metal Pebble watch yesterday and was actually shocked to discover it was both smaller and thinner than my own analog watch, which isn't particularly big or chunky.

Re: Android coming to wearables

#79

Post by maxerickson »

smokinjoe wrote: post #54
kshatrea wrote: post #3

I am in the position of being torn apart by two very strong feelings. One is the world where information flow due to companies like Google does a real service to humanity: for e.g. wearing devices that can keep us reminded of our meds or monitor sugar levels, to talk just about the possibilities in healthcare. Then I think of Edward Snowden and I now know that what Google knows, maybe America/Russia/China/WhatHaveYou…

More and more I'm thinking that some sort of Digital Bill of Rights is necessary to carry on in this technological-based World. At first I always thought of it as a nice thing, but perhaps a little too abstract or extreme to really do what it needs to do. However now we have some very large and real threats to our personal lives via this medium. I just feel like it makes a lot of good sense to produce something of th…

One approach would be to require that a person/group/company that is aggregating information report the storage and use of the information to the people in the database.

You could have some arbitrary cutoffs, like don't worry about information on less than 1000 people or stored less than 3 months (or whatever numbers you want to pick out of the air, the point is that the threshold for reporting might not be 0).

What I think this might do in many cases is make storing the information more expensive than any value derived from it. It also gives people a chance to learn that the water company is sharing their usage with the police (or whatever).

Re: Android coming to wearables

#80

Post by happyscrappy »

danford wrote: post #63
lutusp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. The difference between Apple and Google has recently occurred to me: with Apple, their secrets are in jeopardy. With Google, yours are.

I feel the only reason your secrets may not be in jeopardy with Apple is because they don't know as many... If you really want your secrets to be safe you wouldn't use any closed source code at all and would take security precautions to secure the code you do use. Unfortunately we live in a time when closed-source software is the norm and too many people think having a secure, open, communications infrastructure is t…

>but I hope one day we'll look back on this time and wonder what we were thinking by allowing digital goods to be closed source

Yes, let's have the government mandate what license your code should have! Facepalm.

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