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December 9, 2024
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Linking Northern and Central NJ, Bronx, Manhattan, Westchester and CT

This week Google held its Google IO confer­ence. The keynote speaker went on for over two hours. Anyone who knows me knows I can only sit for about a half hour before my ADD kicks in.

Though I wasn’t able to attend— the price tag for admission, if you could get in, was $1000—there was a large amount of coverage. Google’s smart­watch platform made its on-stage de­but with the company calling it a “new phase in miniaturization of technology.” Google released its new operating sys­tem in competition with Apple IOS 8. Those lucky enough to be at Google IO will receive either a watch or, eventually, Motorola’s smartwatch, the Moto 360. Now it will be possible to make a pow­erful computer comfortable on your wrist all day long. It’ll make your in-re­al-life conversations more comfortable too.

With all of the hype over weara­ble tech, at first glance this technol­ogy seems more James Bond than practical technology. Android users typically check their phone 125 times a day. Instead of getting out that in­creasingly large “Phoneblat,” like the Galaxy Note 3, an Android Wear smartwatch will quickly show you relevant information at a glance.

And Android Wear is where it’s at. While the LG watch and newly an­nounced Samsung Gear Live will be available in July, the Moto 360 release date is still stalled with a vague sum­mer launch and still unspecified price. The Google Glass-filled audience didn’t much care for this.

Android Wear supports both round and square-shaped displays and follows Google’s design trend of appearing as a stream of cards. Swip­ing and pressing and holding chang­es cards and options. These watches are going to look good, feel comfort­able, and be super functional.

Apple will also be getting into the wearable-tech race. Following re­cent news that Apple is prepping an iWatch for release this fall, a new re­port claims that the company has en­listed several professional athletes to test the still-unannounced device. (Top players from U.S. profession­al sports leagues, including Major League Baseball (MLB), the Nation­al Hockey League (NHL) and the Na­tional Basketball Association (NBA), are testing the device’s “fitness capa­bilities in intense training environ­ments,” according to 9to5Mac.) Re­portedly powered in part by Apple’s new Healthkit app, the wearable device could serve as a major new tracking and diagnostics tool for pro­fessional athletes and amateur fit­ness enthusiasts alike. Sources claim that the device, which reportedly has a curved screen, is already in produc­tion, and will debut in October.

Though the price tag for wearable technology seems to be high, this isn’t stopping anyone from trying to pur­chase it. It’s amazing how wearable technology is coming on the scene and people can’t wait to get their hands on it. Being a tech person who grew up in the ’8os on a Radio Shack TRS-80, if you would have told me that we’d have this technology on our wrists I would not have believed you.

Stay tuned. Google and Apple are working on vehicles that will broad­cast your Smartphone on your car screen. Do we really need cars that will drive themselves? Who knows? But it’s being developed.

Here is something I saw at the Google I/O conference called Google Cardboard. Developers at I/O walked away with a strange construction kit for a project named, imaginatively, Cardboard.

If you want to put this together yourself the link is https://gweb-card­board.appspot.com/.

If you want to see some more of the Google I/O show here is the link http://mashable.com/2014/06/25/ google-io-everything-to-know/

By Shneur Garb

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