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Google made a video starring a sloth to promote Project Jacquard's newest smart backpack
It comes in two sizes starting at $200 with the Jacquard chip in the left strap
Google is all about ambient computing these days. From TVs to speakers, the company is prioritizing smarter, more connected technology. Google began making smart clothing when it started Project Jacquard back in 2015. Since then, the project has produced things like jackets with Levi and shoe insoles with Nike. Now Google is announcing its latest fabric-based innovation: two new backpacks developed with Samsonite. And they start at prices low enough for normal people to actually consider buying one.
The Adidas GMR is a $40 Google Jacquard tag with a FIFA game tie-in
Play real soccer, get good at virtual soccer
Last week, Google's Advanced Technology and Projects unit teased a collaboration centered around its Project Jacquard smart clothing tag featuring sportsgear brand Adidas and video game publisher Electronic Arts. Well, the teasing's over now and what we've got are a new pair of insoles that are meant to get you (or your kids) playing real soccer while also acing virtual soccer in EA Sports FIFA Mobile. Adidas calls it GMR.
Levi's and Google are partnering once again to deliver two new jackets with Google's touch-sensitive Jacquard technology built-in. With these products, Google and Levi's are preparing to bring Jacquard to a wider audience. The first collaboration between the two companies resulted in the Commuter Trucker Jacket, which launched in 2017 for $350. Thankfully, these new jackets are significantly cheaper, with the standard version starting at $198. While the Commuter Jacket was an entirely new product, these new Jacquard-equipped jackets are based on Levi's classic trucker jacket.
When it went on sale in late September, Levi's Commuter Trucker Jacket was the first piece of clothing to integrate Google's Project Jacquard touch-gesture functionality. At $350 a pop, it's not a surprise that the Jacquard by Google app (which is used to customize and control the jacket) shows just 100-500 installs. That means a few hundred people will be delighted to learn that the app just got its first major update, which lets wearers of the Jacquard-woven jacket use gestures that enable new light modes for the tag on the sleeve, as well as find their phone.
Pixel 2 and 2 XL owners are getting a small bonus for purchasing Google's latest smartphones. Google Spotlight Stories, a vestige of Google's Motorola days showcasing the power of virtual reality storytelling, is giving owners of the latest Pixel devices early access to "Son of Jaguar," an animated short film about a luchador from director Jorge Gutierrez.
Google kept Motorola's ATAP (Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects group) when it sold the company a few years ago, but some high-profile projects like Ara have failed to materialize. Now, the ATAP division is finally bearing fruit. The Project Jacquard touch-sensitive fabric first demoed more than two years ago is coming to market as a collaboration with Levi's. The new Levi's Commuter Trucker Jacket launches this Wednesday for $350.
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- Nexpaq has stated that it is *not* working on a modular phone. 9to5Google's Justin Duino has also confirmed that they meant Makoski is working on a modular platform, not a modular phone. We regret the error.
Following the death of Google's Project ARA, it has been revealed that Dan Makoski, founder of Project ARA and former head of design at Google ATAP, has now officially been confirmed to be working at Nexpaq. In case you don't know what Nexpaq is, it's a startup that campaigned on Kickstarter to create modular phone cases for popular phones like the iPhone 6, Galaxy S6 edge, and Galaxy S5.
It's alright if you've already forgotten about Project Soli - with all of the crazy futuristic stuff that the Google Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team works on, it's easy to get confused. Essentially, Soli is a system that adapts radar-style techniques into tiny hardware in order to enable the tracking of hands and fingers (or anything else, really) which in turn allows software to recognize hand gestures with precision and accuracy that beats anything on the consumer market today. It's pretty cool - watch this video from last year's Google I/O for a crash course.
Fans of the burgeoning art of 360-degree short-form storytelling have probably been enamored by Google's Spotlight Stories, a series of videos designed to highlight the narrative potential of the VR format. The latest one is Pearl, a sort of extended animated music video about a man, his daughter, and the beat-up hatchback car that they share over about 20 years. The short is directed by Patrick Osbourne, and the original song "No Wrong Way Home" was written by Alexis Harte and JJ Weisler and performed by Nicki Bluhm and Kelley Stoltz.
Google sold Motorola to Lenovo at the end of 2014, but now it's getting a small piece of it back—the CEO. Lenovo recently announced a reorganization of its mobile business. This included the departure of Moto's CEO Rick Osterloh, and now we know why. Osterloh has come back to Google where he will lead a new hardware team that's responsible for Nexus, Chromecast, Glass, and more.
Combining metallic alloys with natural or synthetic threads, Google's ATAP and its industrial partners have created Jacquard yarn. Named for Joseph Marie Jacquard's inventions, the yarn is the basis for ATAP's Project Jacquard, an effort to make it easy for textile makers to weave interactive surfaces into everyday textiles like clothes and furniture. These surfaces would ultimately control things like mobile devices, and perhaps evolve into experiences and functions of their own. Jacquard yarn allows these new surfaces to either be plainly visible or completely hidden from the user so, just like regular yarn, designers can decide exactly how a surface will appear - or not appear, as the case may be.
Owners of Motorola's newer Android devices are probably familiar with Spotlight Stories. Those are the immersive animated shorts that are available via the built-in Spotlight Player app. Now Google has released a new Spotlight Stories app that has all three shorts from the Motorola experience, but adds a new live-action film called Help.
Project Tango, also known as "that Google thing that isn't Project Ara," is growing up. The 3D motion and mapping hardware has been moved out of the Advanced Technology And Products Group (basically Google's version of Lockheed Skunkworks) after two years of development and the not-quite-release of a developer's kit. Now, like all recent graduates in this economy, it's moving back in with its parents at Google. So... right down the hall in Mountain View, I suppose?
Google Maps is one of those apps that will always have an enormous number of potential new features, so it's interesting to see the things Google is focusing on with each new release. We just saw an update to v9.2 with new navigation settings and auto-correct for searches, but there are plenty of other really interesting additions in the works. Let's take a look at some of the features we might have to look forward to. It's time for a teardown.
The third installment of Motorola's Spotlight stories has arrived in the Spotlight Player, and it's called Duet. Like the last two videos, this is an interactive story that you experience by moving your device around to follow the characters. While the last stories (Windy Day and Buggy Night) were quirky and whimsical, Duet is one of those heartstring-tugging, Disney-esque shorts. If you don't want to see too much, go watch the story now before checking out the screenshots.
Project Ara is still going strong, and Google demonstrated it at I/O at the ATAP presentation. Project Ara Technical Lead Paul Eremenko talks up the modular phone platform in the video below (starting at around 23:30), bringing the concept beyond simple phone component upgrades. "What if a phone could see in the dark? What if a phone could test if water is clean?" The collaborative Ara team wants the hardware to be just as flexible as the larger Android ecosystem.
Google's ATAP team is doing cool stuff with Project Tango – like sending it into space to help astronauts do stuff. Of course, those of us on earth also want to get our hands on this upcoming tech to see what it's all about, as well (though probably not for the $1k asking price of the dev unit). According to ATAP team member Regina Dugan in a talk today at I/O 2014, there should be a retail version made by LG hitting the streets next year.
So we all know that Project Tango is cool – programing a mobile device to be aware of its own surroundings just as people are can be potentially beneficial in many ways. NASA has clearly seen something in the in Tango as well, as the company has been working with Google since last year to utilize the project with its own robotic platform called SPHERES. In a nutshell, it wants to incorporate Tango into autonomous, space-aware robots that will take some of the load off of astronauts on the International Space Station by doing some of the work for them.
Google's Project Ara might be the very definition of a geek pipe dream: an idea that makes a lot of sense, but isn't quite possible with current technology, being made real with applied engineering and creativity. Even with Motorola being sold to Lenovo, the Ara modular phone project is still full speed ahead at the Googleplex under the new ATAP team. Dave Hakkens of Phonebloks, who presented a very similar concept back in September, was recently given a tour of ATAP's progress. He was kind enough to bring a video camera along.