Let's Talk Tech
Borrowing inspiration from Apple Photos and Lumia Storyteller, Google has given their Photos app a fresh coat of paint. Combined with Unlimited storage for compressed photos and videos, it’s a nice step in the right direction for cleaning up the disparity between Manufacturer photo gallery apps and Google Plus. Let’s take a full tour through all the new features and tools!
Google put a fresh coat of polish on Android Wear and built in a few new features to play with! Let’s take a look at Android’s newest smartwatch OS!
As part of their roll out for Windows 10, Microsoft will be making their services as accessible as possible to people on all operating systems. They’ll be delivering music apps, for example, which will tie into OneDrive for people to stream their entire music collection anywhere they have data.
Most interesting however is the recent reveal that their digital assistant Cortana will also be going cross platform. Syncing any phone with a Windows 10 PC will setup their companion app which provides deep integration with services on the phone.
Similar to Google Now and Siri, Cortana can look for relevant information in emails and calendar entries, and can respond to voice commands. She’s become popular for having a bit more personality than offerings from Google or Apple.
It’s an interesting move from Microsoft as they shift away from making popular services exclusive to their ecosystem, and opens the door to broad adoption from people on every platform. You can catch more info in their announcement video below.
(via Microsoft)
Instagram continues to ignore some of the best smartphone cameras on the market by letting their BETA app on Windows Phone continue to rot. With no updates for well over a year, we can hope they’re working on a Windows 10 app (at least porting over their iOS app), but in the meantime we have Windows Phone developer extraordinaire Rudy Huyn.
His third party Instagram client for Windows Phones 6Tag has long been the gold standard for sharing higher quality pics on Microsoft’s OS. Now his latest update brings video uploading to the table, alongside a few new photo filters.
6Tag has always been able to shoot video, but it was unable to upload previously shot video. A new video editing menu in 6Tag replicates that functionality from Instagram’s app on iOS and Android.
This feature is brand spanking new, and Rudy has already announced a minor bug fix has been submitted to Microsoft, but in the meantime, we’ve had no complaints using it on a Lumia Icon.
Microsoft Research has delivered mobile and desktop apps to help us smooth out video and create dynamic timelapse projects with fluid movement. Let’s take a look at Hyperlapse Mobile, and how it compares to Instagram’s Hyperlapse app for iOS!
This is a perfect example of where we can start pushing the boundaries on consumer wearable technology.
Dexcom makes medical equipment to help manage diabetes. Patients were a small sensor, plugged into their skin, which continuously monitors their blood sugar. This is a far more convenient and accurate way to get a sense of trends and to manage health than solely relying on individual blood tests on strips.
Of course there’s always room for improvement. Dexcom’s CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) sends a Bluetooth signal to a little standalone unit, which is another little gadget to keep track of and charge. What if we could send that monitoring info to consumer devices like phones or watches to get near real-time data?
Dexcom has brought an official app to the Apple Watch which displays info and graphs, but using the same general connection protocols, a developer is working on the same connection for Android Wear watches. Unofficial Apps xDrip and NightWatch pull the info from the Dexcom unit and send it to an Android Wear watch.
Once connected, users can get updates every five minutes with their blood sugar and can see daily trends displayed as a graph.
You can check out the XDrip and NightWatch projects via Stephen Black’s page on GitHub for more info.
Adobe has released a killer update for their Lightroom Mobile app for Android.
Not only does the app bring compatibility for tablets and MicroSD card storage, for folks looking to produce the highest quality content possible while on the go, you can now edit RAW photos.
It’s like the difference between editing the raw audio off of a CD or working from a compressed MP3. Most people use JPG files, which are squished for easier sharing. RAW photos retain all of the detail and information from the camera sensor, before software turns them into the visual equivalent of MP3’s.
This update will require the new Google Camera API which allows for RAW capture. This API was released with Lollipop, but of course not all manufacturers are using it. You can test your phone with this Manual Camera Compatibility app to see if RAW capture will work. The Galaxy S6 for example supports manual photo features, but does not support saving RAW images.
This is an excellent step for mobile content creation on the Adobe platform. You can grab Lightroom Mobile on Google Play.
***Update for tech clarification at the end***
The Windows Phone platform has often been criticized for a lack of apps. Windows 10 will bring new tools for developers to create universal apps that run on Phones, Tablets, Laptops, Hybrids, Desktops, and the XBox.
Yet it can still be difficult courting developers to stray from the iOS and Android duopoly. There have been rumors swirling that Microsoft would be allowing ported Android apps to run on Windows 10, and at the Build Developer conference Microsoft took it one step further.
New tools will be provided to easily transition Java and C++ apps from Android, and developers will also be able to transition Objective C apps from iOS to Windows Phone.
Developers typically focus on iOS first to bring new services to market thanks to the consistency of Apple’s ecosystem. Conceivably, those same developers can invest far fewer resources to bring that service to EVERY device running Windows 10 than moving that same app to Android.
King.com was given as an example of one of the first companies to utilize these new tools, porting Candy Crush from iOS to Windows Phone in a matter of hours.
There’s now even less of a barrier for developers to bring services to the Windows ecosystem, especially as Microsoft expects Windows 10 to be on over one billion devices within the first year of release, handily outpacing the number of gadgets running iOS 8 or Android 5.0.
***Update***
For those wondering, Microsoft will be adding a subsystem to Windows 10 that can run Android Open Source Project software. The APK’s which install Android apps will be installed directly, in a secure partition, though if apps call certain API’s or depend on services Google wont allow on Windows, then obviously the app wont work. Microsoft will be providing tools to easily port certain actions, say an App calls for Google Now, it can be pointed over to look for Cortana instead.
For iOS apps, Microsoft is providing software for devs to completely recompile apps written in Objective C. iPhone apps will not be running in Windows Phone in the same way Android apps will run in a little emulation pocket.
While we’ll have to wait for Windows 10 on more devices to see the fruits of Android APK support, Microsoft has already released the iOS re-compiler for free, which hopefully means we’ll start seeing iOS services show up in the Windows store soon.