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After self-driving cars and robot workers, Google even wants to enter your home!
I'm Chiara, and this is Tech Break.
Google bought the company Nest Labs for $3.2 billion. The company makes an advanced thermostat,
the Nest, and the newer Nest Protect, a smoke and carbon monoxide detector.
Both products can be remotely controlled through iOS and Android apps, and are able to communicate
with each other and learn our habits, operating autonomously if necessary.
The company was founded in 2010 by Tony Fadell, one of the iPod's fathers. Indeed, the Nest
inherits its shape from the iPod's control wheel. The acquisition represents Google's
first step into home automation.
Google also introduced a new feature for its Gmail e-mail service, which allows to contact
users whose address is unknown, searching through Google+.
The new feature sparked immediate controversy, similarly to what happened after the integration
of Google+ and YouTube, since - while not revealing email addresses - it potentially
allows anyone to be contacted by anyone else. The new option can be switched off, though
being enabled by default. For users with many followers on Google+, the default setting
allows to send emails only if the sender is included in the recipient's circles.
During the Consumer Electronics Show 2014, there were many announcements related to interesting
products and services.
In addition to the Steam Machines and the Oculus Rift,
mentioned in our previous episode, all areas that will probably dominate this year were
covered. Among them TVs, growing bigger and bigger in terms of size and definition, and
offering even wider aspect ratios than 16/9. Samsung showed a 85'' TV which, when a button
is pushed, bends its screen to provide a more captivating view, while LG unveiled smart
TVs based on the WebOS operating system, acquired from the defunct Palm
Sony announced a new service called Playstation Now, which will allow to play games in streaming
by using Playstation 3, Playstation 4, PSP and even tablets, smartphones, and smart TVs.
Parrot unveiled two new smartphone-controlled drones, which will be added the AR Drone that
made the company famous: the small Minidrone flies and can roll on the floor and walls,
while Jumping Sumo can jump. Intel introduced a memory card-sized micro-computer,
the Edison, while NVIDIA showed the new powerful Tegra K1 chip, intended for mobile devices,
with 192 graphics processing cores.
Largely, the most likely technology trends for 2014 will follow the products that were
presented or announced at CES. In addition to the consolidation of smartphones
and tablets, that are becoming increasingly popular with respect to traditional PCs, there
will also be home-oriented smart products, that is small devices that can communicate
between themselves, like the aforementioned Nest, allowing to easily create fully customizable
home automation environments. 2014 will also be the year of wearable tech,
including the already famous Google Glass, which should finally reach the public, along
with similar devices from other manufacturers.
In this context, the watch will have great relevance, with several manufacturers (including
Samsung and Pebble) who already launched the first smart watch models, and Apple rumored
to be working on a similar product as well. TVs will be increasingly smarter, featuring
integrated entertainment services, and there will be the 4K boom (with a resolution four
times that of current HD TVs). Even cars will get smarter and smarter!
There will be more and more gesture-based devices, such as the Leap Motion, and many
curved screens, both on smartphones and on big TVs. Online video services such as iTunes,
Chili and Infinity will expand their business in Italy (Netflix is rumored to be entering
the Italian market, as well).
That's all for today. For more information, follow us on
www.techbreak.it, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Greetings from Chiara.