Category: Google

If there is one app outside of Google Photos that shows the power of Artificial Intelligence in Googleville, it is Google Lens.  The AI-driven camera feature allows you to quickly identify objects simply by pointing your camera at them and tapping that object.  At Google I/O yesterday, Google announced some of the next steps for Lens and they are going to be impressive when the land over the next few months.

First, and perhaps the biggest news, is that Lens will be available in the native camera app for several manufactures.  That means the feature will be available a lot more people right out-of-the-box.  If you have a device from LGE, Motorola, Xiaomi, Sony Mobile, HMD/Nokia, Transsion, TCL, OnePlus, BQ, or Asus, you can expect an update to the native camera app on your phone to support Google Lens.

Google Photos is arguably one of the most popular and successful apps that Google has produced today.  But that success is not stopping the company from continue to develop and push Artificial Intelligence – which is already deep inside photos – even further.  Today at I/O, Google announced that Photos will be gaining several AI-driven suggestion features and the ability to add color to black & white photos.

The new suggestions will be based on the content of the photos and the overall quality of them.  If there are pictures of friends for example which are identified by Google Photos, you could see a suggestion to share those photos with that person.  Likewise, if a photo can be enhanced, the suggestions will give you one-tap ability to enhance the photo to improve it.

Today in Mountain View, California, the home of Google, the tech giant will be kicking off their annual developers conference.  Google I/O is one of the more important events and is the second developer conference going on this week behind Microsoft’s Build conference.

The event kicks off this morning at 10:00 am Pacific (1:00 pm Eastern) with the keynote address from Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai.  You can watch the streaming of his keynote on the Google I/O site, https://google.com/io for free.

After being leaked a few weeks back, the new looking Gmail UI is now rolling out to everyone.  It will take a few weeks to get to everyone out there but when you do get it, there will be the option under Settings to try the new Gmail out and use it on the web and on the mobile apps.

The update brings a refresh to a product that has needed it for a long while.  Gmail’s UI fundamentally hasn’t changed in years and this update brings a more Material Design look to it as well as several advanced features like Smart Replies and the ability to snooze emails to handle them later.

Three years ago on Sunday, Google launched Project Fi.  The MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) solution combined T-Mobile and Sprint as carrier options for the Nexus 6 and allowed for seamless switching between the two carriers automatically.  Fast forward to today, you still have T-Mobile and Sprint in the mix but now you also have U.S. Cellular in there for additional coverage.

The idea was a unique one and remains so today.  Project Fi also brought low cost data usage at the time of its launch, particularly for those who traveled internationally.  That part of the service has improved too as you are not longer as severely throttled on your data speed as you were back three years ago.  As for the cost, it still remains mighty competitive in the market.

The G Suite team has announced that 23 new pre-integrated apps have been added to their SAML Single Sign-on (SSO) support in the platform.  SAML is one of two SSO standards that are supported by G Suite and additional apps being supported means that it is easier for Admins to get their users enabled across various services used by their organization.

For those who may not be familiar with Single Sign-On, the hint is somewhat in the name.  SSO allows a domain user to use their network username & password to sign into other services that their organization uses.  It cuts down on users having to remember several passwords but also gives admins greater control and recover tools for those additional services.