Amazon’s Apple Watch App Will Let You Shop From Your Wrist

(GNN) - Though online retailer Amazon wasn’t among one of the many applications Apple introduced this week as coming soon to its new wearable device, the Apple Watch, the company does have an Apple Watch version of its mobile shopping app in the works, we understand.

The shopping app will allow consumers to search for products and even buy them from their wrist using Amazon’s 1-Click ordering system.

Of course, it’s not surprising that Amazon will

address the forthcoming mobile platform – after all, the company tends to release a version of its shopping app on almost any viable mobile or connected platform, not just its own Kindle hardware. And it already has an Android Wear (i.e., smartwatch) version of its shopping app in the wild, so it makes sense that it would build the Apple Watch counterpart, too.

In fact, our understanding is that the Apple Watch version of the Amazon shopping app will operate just like the current Amazon app for Android Wear. That means it will support the ability to search for items using your voice, save products to your Amazon Wishlist, and even the ability to check out quickly using Amazon’s 1-Click ordering. (Oh, this could be dangerous, I think.)

The retailer, however, is not officially confirming the details around its new Apple Watch app at this time, but instead is only hinting that such a thing is in the works. A company spokesperson told us the only statement they’re offering for now is as follows:

“Amazon is constantly innovating on behalf of our customers. We are committed to being anywhere customers want to shop. That includes watches. We have an Amazon shopping app for Android Wear and will look to expand to other devices.”

“Other devices” essentially confirms Amazon’s plans to release an Apple Watch app, if you read between the lines, of course.

(Note: Above image is a mock-up.)

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• The inexorable rise of mobile commerce
• Is the $10,000 Apple Watch worth it? Here is what you can get for that money
• 4 Smartwatch Commerce Apps to Watch

Sparrow Flies Away, As Google Finally Pulls iOS And Mac Email Apps From Apple’s Stores

(GNN) - As Google sharpens the focus on its new Inbox email app, the company has quietly made another move on the email front: it appears to have pulled the Sparrow iOS and Mac apps from their respective Apple App Stores.

Google, as you may remember, acquired the French startup Sparrow, including its staff, its email management apps and its technology, back in 2012.

Google’s last cache of an active page for the $2.99 iOS app was made on February 12, while the $9.99 Mac app was last seen on February 13, and the free Mac app Sparrow Lite was also last seen February 12. Right now, if you really want it, you can still download Sparrow for Mac directly from Sparrow’s own web site.

Inbox — the “smart” email app that helps you manage your inbox — got a mainly positive review from us when it launched in October 2014. It has been in a closed, invite-only service since then, with occasional, strategic openings of the floodgates to let in more users quickly. In January, Google released some early stats about usage that noted 70% of early adopters were Android users, and how many people were using its other features like “Snooze” to read later, Highlights and Bundles.

Sparrow flying away for good shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, but it has been a long time coming. At the time of Google’s acquisition in 2012, reportedly for under $25 million, Sparrow/Google more or less stopped big developments but kept the apps operational and pledged support for existing users.

“While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users,” co-founder and CEO Dom Leca wrote on the site’s homepage at the time of the acquisition. The sale to Google saw a lot of backlash and lament about the eventual fate of the apps.

At the time of the sale, Sparrow was one of the most popular iPhone utility apps. When it first launched on iOS, people praised it for offering a simple, easy-to-use, gesture-based email management service, managing to create what Apple itself, and Google, had completely failed to do for email on the iPhone. It managed to hold on to is high ranking for months after the sale to Google without any apparent effort, before eventually tumbling into neglected obscurity, ending as the 842nd most downloaded app, according to AppAnnie.

The last update to the iOS app was made in October 2013, to add iOS 7 compatibility; it never added iOS 8 support. Sparrow/Google also played around a bit with the price, changing it from $2.99 to $4.99 at one point. The Mac apps never got updated.)

Meanwhile, former Sparrow team members joined Google. Some, such as product designer Jean-Marc Denis, went specifically to work on Inbox. And many other competing email apps have been launched and updated in the meantime. Currently, Gmail and Yahoo Mail are in Apple’s overall ranking of most-popular free apps.

Now it appears that with Google’s bigger push to make Inbox is clear Gmail alternative, Google has done some of its infamous and regular spring cleaning. (Could it be that Google’s on a mini-spree: just last week, Google shut down Helpouts, a Hangouts-based service where you could pay to get people to help you with tasks over its video conferencing service.)

We have reached out to Google, and the Sparrow support email, to ask for further details and will update this post as we learn more.

Could Nvidia Win Big With A GRID Game Streaming Box?

(GNN) - Nvidia has a streaming game service called GRID, which it debuted last year via its Shield dedicated Android gaming devices. The maker of PC and mobile gaming graphics hardware is dabbling in becoming more of a service provider with GRID, especially since it actually has the potential to cannibalize the sale of powerful graphics cards for local gaming rigs. Nvidia is set to make a big announcement that has been “five years” in the making during GDC this year, and we recently theorized on the weekly Droidcast that it could be a dedicated GRID streaming device, like a lightweight, inexpensive set-top box designed specifically to bring game streaming affordably to the living room. Here’s why, despite cannibalization, that might be long-term sense for Nvidia.

Don’t React, Anticipate

The computing world in general is moving towards a streaming future, with remote servers powering a lot of the intensive work required for things like advanced predictive analysis for things like our smartphones. It’s very likely that we’ll actually move into a computing paradigm where most of the actual computing is done on super-powerful servers, with our own personal devices acting much more as individual terminals whereby we merely access the results of the processing done elsewhere. This has long been predicted, but technology is getting to the point now in terms of wireless connectivity access and speeds that it’s actually practical as a foreseeable outcome.

Nvidia’s past business may have relied heavily on both its own graphics card sales, as well as licensing of said tech, but more and more, it will see bigger benefits from providing the power behind the remote servers that will undergird a distributed computing future. With gaming, the potential for streamed services is perhaps even more immediately apparent than for other uses of said tech, so it’s only natural that Nvidia would try to lead in this area. Whereas just a few years ago it was still impractical to make this real (OnLive’s inability to build a truly successful business on a streaming games service is evidence of this), Nvidia has waited, developed its own service and paid attention to when conditions were right.

This meant making sure that general network reliability and speeds were sufficient, but also helping usher in a future where the processors and graphics capabilities available to receptor devices (smartphones, or, set-top boxes) could handle the remaining work of rendering received feeds on high-resolution displays without any issues. A lengthy testing period, with a cadre of devices optimized for use of the service (Shield tablet and portable) has also helped more perfectly set the stage for what comes next.

GRID Box Benefits

A GRID box gives Nvidia a way to deliver a streaming games service with parameters it controls, at least at first, meaning it can continue to do as much as possible to maximize the conditions for successful streamed gaming. It also offers a way for Nvidia to embrace a cartridge razor model of revenue, with low initial buy-in but sustained higher revenue from subscription service.

It would also allow Nvidia to continue to demonstrate the value of its mobile chipsets to potential OEM partners. Shield hardware serves this purpose to some degree, and a GRID box would be of value in convincing set-top box and TV makers to take a look at the K1, X1 and whatever future mobile chips Nvidia decides to bring to market. Using Android means these chips can also support media apps, providing a double-advantage that competitors can’t necessarily offer thanks to AAA gaming.

Evolve Or Die

Whatever Nvidia is preparing to unveil at GDC, you can be pretty sure it’ll go beyond a simple upgrade to the GTX line of graphics cards (though if it is just this, I’ll feel pretty stupid). I’m anticipating a GRID device aimed at the living room in this article, but a general launch of GRID services with support beyond the Shield line of hardware, to PCs and perhaps even other mobile devices would make as much sense.

The point is that Nvidia is keenly aware of the general trend the industry is facing, and appears to be making the right move for long-term success in a shifting market. In part, a GRID box is an intermediary step, prefacing a time when consoles disappear and the screens and projectors we use to display our media also provide all the interactive gaming, and advanced computing, we could ever hope to need as consumers.

The companies that do the best in terms of pacing out their product cycle to get us there along a timeframe that keeps up with advances in enabling technology are those that will succeed and thrive.

Don’t Be Google

(GNN) - Dear Google: what happened? Android sales are falling. Chrome has become a bloated hog. Analysts are calling you the new Microsoft, or, much worse, “the new Yahoo!” And most damning of all: you have squandered our trust. You used to be special, Google. Or at least we used to believe you were special.

But you seem more and more like just another megacorporation.
Does that sound harsh? Consider the Zoe Keating kerfuffle:

YouTube gave Keating a take-it-or-leave contract, some terms of which were unacceptable to her. Some of the terms were also pretty hard to understand […] As YouTube now explains it — following a public debate following Keating’s blog post — Keating has a relatively simple choice […] These responses go against descriptions of the agreement presented to Keating (and transcribed by her) by YouTube previously, and presumably represent an update to the contract’s terms.

At best, Google is guilty of incredibly confusing and heavy-handed communication, something they have long been (rightly) accused of. At best. But, as Jamie Zawinski put it:

This sounds like Google using the same strategy they used with Google Plus: instead of creating a new service and letting it compete on its own merits, they’re going to artificially prop it up by giving people no choice but to sign up for it. Except in this case the people being strong-armed are the copyright holders instead of the end users. (So far, that is! Wait for it.)

Consider “Never trust a corporation to do a library’s job“:

As Google abandons its past, Internet archivists step in to save our collective memory … Google Groups is effectively dead … Google News Archives are dead … Projects that preserve the past for the public good aren’t really a big profit center. Old Google knew that, but didn’t seem to care […] The desire to preserve the past died along with 20% time, Google Labs, and the spirit of haphazard experimentation.

…or, as VICE puts it: “Google, a Search Company, Has Made Its Internet Archive Impossible to Search.”
Consider “Google to shut down GTalk on February 16, will force users to switch to Hangouts“:

Again, Google exhibiting 90s era Microsoft behavior. But they're like totally not evil or anything.
— 1.0.0-alpha (@steveklabnik) February 13, 2015

Remember the good old days, a decade ago, when everyone admired everything Google did? What happened?

…I believe I may have an answer or two to that question.

Google has long been a bizarre swan of a company. To the casual eye, it’s a billion Android phones playing YouTube videos, its nonpareil search engine, plus its Google X moonshots and miracles, robot dogs rescued from the military, SpaceX funding rounds, etc, all cruising effortlessly along. Call that Awesome Google. But under the waterline, a gargantuan advertising machine paddles desperately, propelling Awesome Google towards its applause. Call that Mammon Google.

For all those analysts cavils, Mammon Google is still a colossal money-making machine, and both it and Awesome Google employ thousands of the smartest people alive (including — disclaimer/disclosure — multiple personal friends.) I fully expect Google to overcome the business challenges it faces…

…but I no longer expect to be particularly happy about this.

We’ve all been conditioned to see Awesome Google, but of late, Mammon Google seems harder and harder to ignore. Why is this? There seems to be no need for this. Mammon is still pouring money into Awesome. So what happened to the golden glory-days Google we knew and loved?

It’s true what Ben Thompson of Stratechery says: Google today is very reminiscent of Microsoft in the 90s. They too were the beneficiary of a seemingly endless, unassailable, firehose of money. But instead of spending that money on moonshots, Microsoft became a much-loathed corporate predator that wasted colossal amounts of time and money on infighting and horrors like Microsoft Bob and Windows Vista. Why has Google apparently taken a few steps down that cursed primrose path? Why is Mountain View in danger of becoming the new Redmond?

Why indeed. It turns out that Google is literally the new Microsoft:

Where Google employees formerly worked. Most from Microsoft. pic.twitter.com/uJcI1Q2B6D
— Bill Gross (@Bill_Gross) February 14, 2015

(And we’re not just talking about low-level engineers here. Vic Gundotra, the former head of Google Plus, was a former Microsoft executive; which kind of explains a lot.)

This may help to explain why Google is, I believe, slowly but steadily losing our trust. Nowadays, when you interact with Google, you don’t know if you’ll be talking to Awesome Google; Mammon Google; …or a former Microsoftian whose beliefs and values were birthed in Redmond, and who, as a result, identifies a whole lot more with Mammon — and with bureaucratic infighting — than with Awesome.

Say what you like about Apple, and I can complain about them at length, you always know what to expect from them. (A gorgeous velvet glove enclosing an exquisitely sleek titanium fist.) But Google seems increasingly to have fragmented into a hydra with a hundred tone-deaf heads, each with its own distinct morality and personality.

That wouldn’t matter so much if trust and awesomeness — “don’t be evil!” “moonshots!” — weren’t so intrinsic to the Google brand … which, to my mind, gets a little more tarnished every year.

Google’s Copresence Looks Like A Cross-Platform AirDrop

GNN - Google has a new service in the works that could allow users of Android devices to share media with others nearby, even if those users are rocking iOS devices like iPhone and iPads instead of gadgets running Google’s mobile OS. The so-called Copresence feature, revealed by an Android Police source digging around in the latest Google Play Services APK, would allow devices to use location information or Bluetooth to authenticate based on proximity, without requiring contact list approval as does Android Beam.

The Copresence feature would then share information using either Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi direct to actually shunt info back and forth, and would enable the sharing of maps, music, photos, websites and more, and would likely sport a strong integration with its Hangouts chat application, based on the graphics uncovered in the Services APK. It would make a lot of sense to see this housed in the Hangouts app itself, too, but there’s also an API for Chrome that’s been revealed previously, and Google has a broad patent, so this, like the Cast function for Chromecast, could be something that we see made available to developers to include in their own software on an app-by-app basis.

Apple’s AirDrop on iOS allows for sharing between iOS devices that are near one another, across networks and with the option of sharing beyond your address book, but it doesn’t allow for sharing between ecosystems. The iOS 8 update and Yosemite mean that it can now shuttle things between mobile and desktop, but you still have to be an Apple device user to partake. Google’s Copresence feature would apparently go beyond that limitation, in the same way that its Chromecast abilities extend to the iOS ecosystem, while AirPlay remains an Apple-only affair.

According to Android Police, Google Copresence will debut sometime in “the coming weeks,” so hopefully we don’t have to wait long to get our hands on what looks like a very useful feature. With the release of Google’s next-gen mobile OS Android 5.0 Lollipop just around the corner, it sounds like a good time for Copresence to make its debut.

Nokia’s Here Maps Its Future On Samsung With Its First Android And Tizen Apps

#GNN Tech - Opera may have taken some of the wind out of the Nokia brand’s sails with the news that its browser will be replacing Nokia’s on the now-Microsoft-owned, winding down, feature handset business. But today the Finnish company that has remained after the Microsoft handset sale had some interesting news of its own: it’s tying up with Samsung for two new versions of its Here mapping product, a free Android version coming first to Samsung’s Galaxy line of devices, and a Tizen version for Samsung’s Tizen-powered smart devices, specifically the Gear smartwatch.

Nokia says that Here app will be available on Samsung Galaxy devices exclusively. We have asked the company when it plans to make it available to other Android handsets and will update this as we learn more. (Update: there will be availability elsewhere, but no timeline when. “HERE for Android is part of our partnership with Samsung, but we aim to make HERE available to as many people as possible,” a Here spokesperson tells me, adding that it will be sometime “later this year.” Another spokesperson tells us that Here for Samsung Galaxy smartphones will be rolled out at the same time that the Gear S starts to retail — further strengthening the link between the two pieces of news and the functionality.

The new apps are coming at a key time for Samsung, which is trying more and more to differentiate itself from the rest of the Android pack — the world’s most popular mobile platform, but also the most widely used by a variety of OEMs alongside Samsung — and create services that are unique to its devices alone.

Samsung is currently the world’s most popular maker of Android-based smartphones and other devices, but it has a lot of competition coming after it, from established competitors like LG to those like Xiaomi from China cleaning up in its home market and very clearly looking at growing more.

At the same time, it’s looking for ways of driving more interest in its new wearable device — hence tying the functionality together to incentivize consumers to stay within the Samsung ecosystem.

Mapping has been one of the “killer apps” of the new age of mobile, with location-based services helping our always-on, always-present devices becoming companions for our everyday lives and the things we like and need to do, taking things like smartphones beyond basic functions like making voice calls and sending texts to others.

For Here, the interesting thing is that the Samsung apps are the result of a licensing deal between the two companies — meaning that Here will have received some form of payment as part of it.

That’s important for a company that only recently, after losing a lot of money for years, been just about breaking even — or reporting a slight loss, depending on whether you count its non-IFRS or IFRS-reported numbers. Even though maps may be a core part of our mobile usage these days, that hasn’t always translated into them being a strong revenue generator.

And the moves come as Here is undergoing a reorganization of its own: Michael Halbherr, a longtime Here exec, stepped down as CEO last week.

The Android app will work much like it does on Windows Phone and iOS devices — users will be able to access maps for some 200 countries, see turn-by-turn navigation, search for businesses and other places of interest, and access the maps using GPS when there is no network connectivity available.

The Tizen Gear app, meanwhile, will mean that users of the Galaxy smartphones will be able to sync up their maps between their devices. The idea here is that for some situations mapping will be easier to plan on one device, but to use on the other. The apps will also integrate with in-car systems and integrate with mapping apps that run across all three, such as location-sharing app Glympse.

Secret Update Removes Photo Library Access As It Faces Renewed Claims It Isn’t So Anonymous

#GNN Tech - Secret has a new update out for Android, with an iOS equivalent arriving sometime next week. The app changes include the addition of Flickr image search, which requires the “exchange” of the ability to use pics from your photo library, in a move clearly designed to limit users from sharing potentially damaging pics of people they know. You can still take a pic on the fly and share it, but you can’t dip into the archive, which could help stop users from sharing images of their exes in the buff, for instance.

Other updates going out in the new version include the ability to poll contacts via a “Yes or No” poll, as well as more new tools aimed at shoring up the potential for the anonymous social network to do damage to individuals and their reputations.

The analyzing process implemented by Secret to detect names has been improved with the power to detect keyword, sentiment and photos of people who might also be questionable. The app will present its warning when it finds these new types of questionable content, and if the poster proceeds, the post will be flagged for review by Secret to make sure it’s safe.

Secret is also going a step further with its real name policy, and isn’t just warning users against posting, but is actively blocking posts with the names of individuals when it can, and are devoting resources to improving this aspect of its app.

These updates are timely, for a couple of reasons: First, Secret faces legal action in Brazil, where a judge has granted a temporary injunction against it being made available in either Google Play or the App Store. This has resulted in Apple blocking its availability in its mobile software store in order to comply with the order.

The problem in Brazil was sparked by at least one user claiming that pictures of them were shared on the network by an anonymous poster, including their personal details, so the update here seems designed directly to address that through blocking of the camera roll and automatic detection and deletion of real name posts.

Second, Secret faces renewed scrutiny about the actual anonymity of its app after a new Wired report reveals that simple hacks (more like address book tricks) can reveal Secrets attached to a specific address book.

Secret has responded already, saying it has plugged the gap, but the workaround resembles ones we’ve seen before, so it raises the question of whether a permanent solution will ever render posts anonymous in a lasting way. For its part, Secret says these exploits have never resulted in a significant outing of user identity, and they are always addressed as soon as they’re discovered.

The company has been pretty good about responding to issues quickly, which is key as it operates in clearly sensitive territory. The question that remains is whether it can stay out ahead of these recurring issues while also pushing the product forward in a meaningful way.