Liam Spradlin
Contributing since August, 2011
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1523articles
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About Liam Spradlin
Liam loves Android, design, user experience, and travel. He doesn't love ill-proportioned letter forms, advertisements made entirely of stock photography, and writing biographical snippets.
Latest Articles
We've been hearing a lot about Volantis lately, but what about the other supposed Nexus device - Shamu? Since we originally broke the story back in July (with the Information affirming Shamu's existence soon after) things have been relatively quiet, with only a benchmark test here or there popping up with alleged specs that seemed to point to a smaller device.
If you have an affinity for vintage cameras, you may find yourself toting around a light meter to make sure every exposure comes out just right. If you happen to also be a Glass explorer, David Young has a solution for that - Google Glass Light Meter, a piece of Glassware that entered Google's official collection just a few days ago.
WhoSampled - it's easy enough to guess what the service is about from its name. Touting the "world's largest and richest database of music DNA" and an apparent one million users, WhoSampled sends users on a "journey of musical discovery" starting from a single song that contains a sample from another song.
In a triumphant post to its blog today, Rackspace announced that Rotatable Technologies is now "an ex-patent troll." This new designation for Rotatable Technologies comes after the US Patent and Trademark Office declared its patent (6,326,978) unpatentable. Last year, Rotatable Technologies decided to go after Rackspace over the patent, demanding $75,000. Rackspace chose to fight not just the case but the patent itself.
Google Now is constantly gaining new abilities that are generally awesome, if a little bit creepy. One such feature, brought to our attention today, is the ability to keep track of flight prices.
Along with a handful of new tablets, Amazon has officially announced Fire OS 4 (codenamed Sangria), which it says adds hundreds of new features to the "content-forward" operating system.
A couple of months ago, we shared an early look at an impending Play Store update that saw more "materialized" content listings, but the rest of the interface remained largely unchanged. The new, more image-focused interface made thoughtful use of increased white space and introduced some really fun tablet layouts for content listings from movies to books, music, and apps.
Those willing to venture into chrome://flags can often enjoy experimental treats that haven't made it into default circulation yet. One flag in Chrome, brought to our attention by a tipster, enables "answers in suggest," giving users answers to simple questions right in the omnibar. So if for some reason you're wondering what the capital of Maryland is, or the population of the world, you can get the answer without actually performing a search.
We recently posted an exclusive look at technical drawings for a Bluetooth keyboard cover destined for HTC's upcoming Nexus 9 (Volantis) tablet. At the time all we had to go on were drawings accompanying the information provided to us (and my own renders), but VR-Zone caught some photos of the keyboard case as it passed through NCC certification.
If you follow developer Jack Underwood (or myself) on Google+, you're probably aware that Today Calendar, a calendar replacement that has traditionally put streamlined, pleasing design at the center of its mission, is undergoing a full redesign in anticipation of Android's L release and inspired by Google's new design guidelines.
Motorola, in a post to its official blog today, announced that the Moto 360 would be back in stock on its website beginning Tuesday, September 16th. What's more exciting, though, is the promise of pre-order for new products beginning the same day. Yes, that means the new Moto X.
Back at Google I/O we were introduced to Android One, an initiative from Google to give smartphone manufacturers guidance on how to build quality Android experiences using affordable hardware and updates directly from the Google mothership. At the time, Sundar Pichai explained that the program would be launched in India with three hardware partners - Spice, Micromax, and Karbonn "this fall," with other territories coming later.
Back at the Google I/O keynote this summer, we saw a very interesting demonstration - as Sundar Pichai explained, Google wants to make the experience between Android devices and Chromebooks seamless by allowing Android apps to run natively on Chrome (using App Runtime for Chrome, currently in beta). Evernote, Vine, and Flipboard were demonstrated on stage, and today Google has announced the first batch of Android apps that will run on Chrome right now. Among them are Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words, and Vine. Flipboard is still notably absent.
Autodesk's mobile offerings for Android are almost always impressive or useful, often both. From SketchBook to Pixlr Express, the company has consistently provided Android users with great apps. Today, there's a new entry in Autodesk's catalog that lives up to that reputation - 123D Catch. In a nutshell, the app lets users create 3D models of real objects using just their smartphone camera.
Amazon has finally (finally!) brought its Prime Instant Video service to Android devices with an Instant Video app available through its own app store.The news comes as part of an update to version 5.0 of Amazon's own app in the Play Store, which sees a broader content shift - the new Amazon app allows users to access Amazon's entire digital catalog, meaning that - besides instant video content - users can shop for (and install) apps from Amazon's app store. This ostensibly makes the Amazon App Store app obsolete, though the old app will still need to hang around on your device to verify apps that use Amazon's optional DRM system. Whether this will change in the future is unclear.
For its first foray into the nascent Android Wear platform, ASUS created the ZenWatch. It aims to be the more fashionable and appealing alternative to the other square watches from LG and Samsung, and I think it largely accomplishes that.
You may remember Google's launch of the Glass explorer program in the UK, which saw the device listed in the Play Store just before I/O. This seemed a little odd at the time, given that the Glass shopping experience in the US has always had its own dedicated checkout process and interface, separate from the Play Store, but bringing the hardware to Google's main store makes sense in the long-run, as the eyeball computer tiptoes toward an inevitable final launch.
Now that we've seen new videos for the Moto 360, Moto Hint, and the new Moto X and G, there's one more promo video to watch - this one, revolving around the "Choose Choice" tagline, gives some behind-the-scenes looks at the "choices" that went into the other videos, including some of the construction work that went into the crazy set used in the other four videos. Like the other videos, it's around a minute long, so it's worth checking out while we wait for more updates to Motorola's website. Conveniently, the video includes YouTube annotations linking to the other product videos we've already covered.
LG says it has been working on the G Watch R for two years. Whether this is true or not, the manufacturer now positions the original G Watch as a "reference device," which makes sense given their partnership with Google on the product and its speedy release after Google I/O. At any rate, the G Watch R is positioned as a product more in keeping with LG's design philosophy and the key elements the company (and more specifically its designers) believe make a good, compelling smart watch.
If you're a customer of Chase Bank, you probably know the pain of opening the bank's crusty old app and dealing with legacy menus and other interface nonsense. But you probably also got an email in late August letting you know that the app would be completely redesigned, and that Chase planned to launch the redesign in September. Well, that redesign is finally a reality, and available in the Play Store right now.