Posts Tagged ‘search’
Meet Japan’s Earthquake Search-and-Rescue Robots
The combination of vulnerability to earthquakes and a natural affinity for robotics has led to a surplus of Japanese rescue robots
Predicting earthquakes is still a remarkably fruitless effort--seismologists are not reliably able to predict even a particular month in which an earthquake will occur, let alone a day. So the work done to mitigate the damage done by earthquakes is often in post-quake search-and-rescue tactics. Interestingly, two of the most earthquake-prone places in the world are also two of the world's hotbeds of robotics engineering. Japan is situated along the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire, at the point where the Pacific and Eurasian tectonic plates collide. The country is continually at risk of massive earthquakes, and as a technological world power, is uniquely capable of creating technological salves for 'quakes.
the photo gallery
Hopefully, advances like the ones shown here will be able to somewhat lessen the destruction of earthquakes in the future.
Note: While most of these creations come from Japan, we stumbled across a few from elsewhere that were so cool we couldn't keep them to ourselves. Although, interestingly, those were mostly from another high-tech and high-risk earthquake area--California.
Google working on search results without searching — “contextual discovery”
If you thought was fast, but it’s about to get even faster. Soon, with the company’s push into “contextual discovery”, you won’t even have to type in a search query to get useful data.
Google’s Marissa Mayer, now the head of consumer products, spelled out the company’s plans at the LeWeb ‘10 conference in Paris, France today, . With contextual discovery, Google will be able to look at a user’s browsing and location profiles to deliver relevant data without the need to search.
According to Mayer, “The idea is to push information to people.” On a mobile device, for example, you could potentially see the menu of a restaurant when you’re actually there. There may even be added social elements, like seeing which items on the menu your friends like. Google is still in the early stages with this concept. Mayer says that on a computer, it could potentially take the form of some sort of panel in your web browser.
The push towards delivering data before we even ask for it is to be expected — after all, where else can Google go after unleashing its lightning-fast Instant Search? It’s also a natural move given that location data on mobile devices is now more readily available thanks to the proliferation of GPS-equipped smartphones. The real question is how contextual discovery will play out on actual computers — I suspect it will rely more on the rich amount of browsing history we build up on desktops and laptops, rather than on location data.
Google has to play it safe when it comes to automatically recommending search results, though, lest it evoke memories of .
Find a transcript of Mayer’s talk and a video embedded below:
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Google Instant heads to the iPhone and Android
As promised, Google has brought its to mobile devices with support for the iPhone and Android, the company .
The service works just the same on mobile devices as it does on the desktop. After turning on the beta instant search functionality, search terms that you type on Google’s mobile website will automatically deliver results. You’ll see predictions for your search terms as you type as well.
Google says it’s “pushing the limits of mobile browser and wireless networks” with the feature. A new implementation for mobile browsers uses the HTML5 standard for Web pages and AJAX, a common Web-programming technique, to dynamically update search results, giving users a big speed improvement in the process.
Google Instant works best on 3G and Wi-Fi connections, but you can also easily turn it off without leaving the search page in case of network hiccups. It’s currently available for iPhones and iPods running iPhone operating system 4, and it’s available for Android 2.2 devices. The company says support for more devices and languages is coming in the next few months.
After playing around with Google Instant on my iPhone 4 for a bit, I’m finding it even more impressive than the desktop. Perhaps it’s because it’s a much bigger speed improvement for mobile search than it was for desktop search, but I’ve definitely found a new appreciation for Google Instant on my iPhone. Now let’s just hope we can get the feature in Gmail soon.
Check out a demo of Google Instant for mobile below:
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Google: Android users search twice as much as others
iPhone users as other smartphone owners, but Android users search twice as much as others, Google announced during its third quarter earnings call today.
The company was responding to questions about how it will be able to monetize its Android mobile operating system. It clearly considers search, and the ads surrounding it, an important aspect of its mobile presence. Google said that mobile searches are more valuable to mobile operators since they earn money from the ads as well.
Google announced a — which includes phones, tablets, and “other devices” — so the segment is already making quite a bit of money for the company. Mobile searches also grew five times over previous years — although that’s not much of a surprise given Android’s massive surge in popularity over the last year. The company said that it would bring its Instant Search feature to mobile platforms “soon”, but wouldn’t be more specific.
In comparison to search and ads, Google doesn’t expect its Android Mobile Market to be much of a revenue maker. The company says that its real aim with the Market is to help app developers make money.
In terms of other ways to make money from Android, Google said it expects growth from mobile payment platforms — something that its Checkout service would certainly benefit from. Mobile transactions right now are hindered by the difficulty of inputting credit card info into a phone, but eventually that process should get simpler.
As Android becomes more popular, and mobile users begin to rely on Google’s search and services more, the company expects the segment to be even more profitable than PCs are today. After all, we generally have our phones with us all the time and could use them in a variety of situations — something that even ultra-portable laptops or netbooks can’t really compete with.
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33 ways to make your app a hit: VentureBeat’s Discovery Directory
As app stores multiply and the number of publicly released apps — just the ones we can see and count — approaches 1 million, content developers are having a hard time standing out from the crowd.
That process is known in the app world as discovery, and it’s getting harder with every new app, as developers fight for the attention of consumers and app-store managers.
“This is one of the key problems of our time,” said Savinay Berry, a vice president at
That’s why we’re tackling the subject of discovery at our second annual conference, , on October 18 in San Francisco. This year, the problem is only getting worse. The Apple App Store has more than 250,000 apps. There are new app stores coming or already in place from many other platform owners, from cell phone carriers to independent app catalogs.
Today, VentureBeat is showing off a bunch of the solutions aimed at solving the discovery dilemma. We call it the Discovery Directory.
We have analogies for this kind of complexity. Online app discovery has gone rom searching through the shelves of a single store to trying to find something you like in a city full of shopping malls.
It’s not unlike the growth of the Web. Early on, when there were tens of thousands of websites, people wondered if there were too many. How would they ever find what they wanted? Along came Yahoo with its directory and then Google with the first truly effective search engine. They solved the problem and created the giant search industry.
But what will be the equivalent of search in the age of apps? If someone solves this problem, they will find a pot of gold, Berry said.
Some blockbuster apps are managing to rise to the top of the app stores without much seeming effort. For sure, good discovery starts with great content. , sold nearly 7 million paid downloads on the App Store, spreading from Finland, then across Europe, to the U.S. It has held the No. 1 spot in the App Store longer than any other title — mostly because of word of mouth.
Rovio designed memorable characters that it can use across platforms and media — spreading to plush toys and possibly a cartoon movie. The product was designed to go across many platforms — Nokia trumpeted its availability in its Ovi app store — and can be easily updated with new levels to keep users coming back to the content.
But not all growth happens organically. Social-game firm reportedly uses a lot of its profits from virtual-goods sales to advertise its new games. Other developers aren’t rich enough to do that, so they have to figure out ways to give their apps a little push to get them across the tipping point so momentum can build.
The clever tricks and tips that we’ve heard about so far in our coverage of the app and game industries are myriad. They show that a little creativity goes a long way toward getting an audience for an app. Here are some of the tips and tricks that we’ve come across over time. I’ve put them in alphabetical order by the name of their provider.
This new feature of the latest version of the iPhone operating system, iOS, is like Xbox Live on the iPhone. It lets you socialize with other gamers, sharing games with them, competing in multiplayer play or posting your achievements and leaderboards for all to see. It helps you discover new games through friend referrals.
This app was born via a on Facebook. Zynga promotes its own games using a cross-promotion bar at the top of its games. Applifier duplicates this kind of cross-promotion bar, but across a bunch of third-party app developers who have joined Applifier. It has driven tens of millions of downloads.
How can you get noticed? , spreading it to review sites and pitching a story to big media. A good story is like free advertising.
For both the iPhone and Android, Appolicious is a social networking service that makes recommendations based on apps that you own, finds and shares the best apps with your friends, and lets you become a top member by doing the best app reviews and lists of cool apps.
This company has a full discovery platform composed of a site, an iPhone and iPad app, and a distributed infrastructure enabling users to search, share, monitor and find apps in a personal way. It generated over 4 million clicks on the App Store since launch and got to No. 2 ranking in the U.S. App Store.
This social network for app users lets you immediately see the most talked-about iPhone or Android apps on leading iPhone blogs. You can see app reviews, browse through all apps, and keep track of the latest via email.
With its social game platform, Aurora Feint socialized the iPhone, building a community of gamers who can share games with friends. Developers who adopt OpenFeint can easily deploy leaderboards, cross promotions, achievements, friend invitations, and multiplayer games. Now it too.
This Boulder, Colo.-based developer got started in April, 2009, making iPhone games. The company’s first title, Ragdoll Blaster, was a hit. But their second app, the free Paper Toss game, was downloaded millions of times and hit No. 1 on the App Store. into the popular free app. That generated more downloads of BackFlip’s paid games. Those ads also generated more revenue from other developers, who bought ads that paid only when their apps were installed. Ad revenue became half of BackFlip’s revenue and it now has seen more than 45 million downloads of its iPhone games.
The two-man company that brought us , which debuted in January, 2009. The game was a viral hit, with users telling their friends to download it, partly because of its sick humor where you could feed native islanders to sharks. Bolt Creative kept it going by updating the game as often as it could; with each upgrade, Bolt changed the icon on the iPhone for the game, indicating to the user that there was an upgrade to download. The company’s fans have uploaded their favorite scenes to YouTube, and Bolt has encouraged fans to create a community around the game.
Go to Chomp’s website and type in what you’re looking for. If you type “war strategy games,” Chomp will search through the App Store and come back with a couple of apps that fit the bill. It’s a search engine on top of the App Store and it works fast.
- Stick a known brand on it. Tapulous created its Tap Tap Revenge music rhythm game and sold tens of millions of units. It created specific versions for artists such as Dave Matthews or Lady Gaga. Fans of those specific celebrities paid to download the app and play rhythm games that were essentially like Guitar Hero on the iPhone. That’s why .
It may have killed off free viral marketing in social apps by stopping developers from spamming users with frivolous messages. But it is slowly opening new channels, such as its Game Dashboard, to highlight undiscovered apps.
Perfecting discovery starts with understanding users through analytics. Flurry’s analytics software is used by thousands of developers whose apps are being used by tens of millions of users. So Flurry knows what’s on the users’ phones. It has added AppCircle as a recommendation engine, analyzing the user’s taste in apps and then recommending apps that it thinks the user will like.
This chain is an old-fashioned retailer with more than 6,000 stores. But it showed it understood how to drive traffic after it bought Kongregate, a site with indie games.. It uses the foot traffic of 500 million people a year coming through its stores to drive the discovery of new content online.
Running the second-largest app store behind Apple has its benefits. The company makes money as game publishers pay extra to have their games highlighted on its site. So where it will give away millions of copies of high-end mobile games from Glu Mobile. The promotion will last a couple of weeks and it is aimed at hooking more users on mobile games, leading to future purchases.
Search works great for websites. But will the giant come up with a way to search through apps on a variety of closed platforms? Perhaps that is what Google’s own social network will be for.
If discovery is a huge problem, by allowing web sites to embed games in their own sites through Heyzap’s widgets. They can also promote games with Heyzap’s social bar and other sharing features.
This social network has just 50 million users. But it has figured out a way to challenge Facebook with its SocioPath social game platform. With it, Hi5 allows developers to adapt Facebook games to any platform. Then it allows gamers to share any game with their friends. Through a “contact importer,” Hi5 will let the gamer share that game with any friend, regardless of the platform they are using. is to liberate developers from Facebook.
This initiative at the incubator run by serial entrepreneur Peter Relan allows Flash games to run on the iPhone through its app. iSwifter will put a limited number of Flash games that are suitable for touch gaming into its app.
This company has created a that shows you its favorite app of the day. You unwrap the mystery app as if you were untying a present. You can also use the cube to find new music or the best YouTube video of the day. It simplifies the process of discovery by creating an app that does the filtering for you.
Xbox Live has been a great service for letting gamers discovery online games and other content on the Xbox 360. Now Microsoft is taking that to the cell phone with an. Those phones have hubs where Xbox Live users can access their account data. And while there are lots of web games accessible via browser, Microsoft can draw attention to the 60 or so launch games that are only on Xbox Live. Essentially, the Xbox Live hub on the Windows Phone 7 is a kind of curation service to weed out what gamers don’t want.
This McKinney, Texas-based company hit it big with Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like game on the iPhone. The game has sold millions of copies. To juice sales, the company created a free version for “Talk Like a Pirate Day” on September 19. The Words With Pirates game took off and . That drove a lot of sales of the paid game.
The allows game publishers to spread their social games outside of social networks, and leverage social to spread mobile and download games.
This company makes a platform that sits on top of Twitter and makes it more useful. The site lists and categorizes apps that use Twitter, from business apps to location apps. Users can review the apps and vote them up or down. You can see who is using a Twitter app, see screen shots of it, and read the reviews.
To get users to pay attention to Android games, PapayaMobile has launched . The app is available for free or 99 cents for just a day. That should drive a search in interest for the app. Once it spreads, friends will want to pick it up and play. But by that time, they may have to pay full price.
Charles Ju’s team of game developers has made more than 50 games on the iPhone. Titles such as . But launching every new game can still be dicey. So Ju’s team pays $2,000 or so to have the game featured on . Getting featured on that site leads to thousands of downloads in one day. That’s enough to get onto the App Store’s list of fastest-growing new apps. From there, the natural fun of the app is enough to keep it gaining momentum.
— With , Qualcomm launched a free friends-based social recommendation service. You can use it to share apps with friends, regardless of what mobile device any given person is using. The effort headed by Kabir Kasargod lets you describe your mobile device. Then you can browse through friends’ apps. If you find an app you like, a link appears asking if you want to get it. The link will take you to the correct app store that has the app available for your phone.
With , RockYou has found a way to monetize Facebook games beyond the normal amount. Lots of users pay free-to-play games on Facebook, but once they are asked to pay for something, most of them drop off. Deal of the Day is a special offer that lets a user accept an offer in lieu of paying for a virtual good in a game. Sometimes the user has to watch a video ad. Then they get the virtual good and can continue playing. to allow third-party developers to use it.
The Android Market for apps isn’t working so well. So Scoreloop is helping out phone companies by offering a white-label service that allows the carriers to build their own social hub on a phone, sort of like having a secondary market for apps that actually works. App developers create Scoreloop-based apps that can be cross-promoted on the hub. to create a social hub on its phones.
Artificial intelligence can play a role in discovery. Research think tank SRI developed AI technology that could serve as a virtual assistant for humans. , which launched a free iPhone app in February. The voice-recognition app allows you to ask for something, such as a restaurant reservation, and Siri finds the place for you and makes the reservation. Much like a good location-based service, Siri can help you discover things you didn’t know were there.
Chief Technology Officer Ge Wang (pictured right) said his company starts with a device, the iPhone, and figures out how to design something unique for it. The team designed Ocarina, where you blow into the iPhone’s microphone and tap on its touch screen to make the sounds of the ancient flute-like wind instrument. It was a unique app when it debuted and Smule marketed it by creating YouTube videos of people playing it. Those videos spread by the millions, allowing users to discover magical apps.
This social network is aimed at discovery and it has that will let users randomly find and rate new sites while they’re on the go. Users can use the app to discover fun stuff and then vote it up or down.
Started as an ad-network aggregator, across a number of platforms that reach more than 100 million users. It combines monetization, virtual goods platforms, ads, and offers to let developers make money and get broad distribution.
The French video game giant entered the Facebook game market last year with Tick Tock. The game got lost among thousands of apps and failed. Now it is trying a new tactic. It is on both Facebook and the iPhone that riff on the company’s most famous brands. In the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood game on the console, you can earn points that you can use in the Assassin’s Creed Project Legacy game on Facebook. You can unlock items in one game and spend them on virtual goods in the second game and visa versa.
Through its , the company lets players opt to view an ad instead of paying for a game with a credit card. It thus broadens the audience that could discover a game.
This list is just a start. I’d like to add more examples, so please point them out in comments.
Getting content noticed is a challenge for everyone making apps. Join us at DiscoveryBeat 2010 and hear secrets from top industry executives about how to break through and profit in the new cross-platform app ecosystem. From metrics to monetization, we’ll take an in-depth look at the best discovery strategies and why they’re working. The conference takes place on October 18th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. Sponsors can contact us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To buy tickets, .
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Google’s Goggles visual search finally lands on the iPhone (video)
Google has finally brought its Goggles visual search feature to the iPhone as part of .
Google software engineer Milan Broum announced the addition of Goggles, which lets users perform visual searches using their iPhone’s camera, in . The feature only works on version 4.0 of the iPhone’s operating system with an iPhone 3G S or iPhone 4 — the only models that contain auto-focusing cameras.
The company previously released Google Goggles on Android last December, and it’s been an exclusive on that platform until now. Microsoft ended up releasing its own spin on visual search in , which makes me wonder what took Google so long to bring Goggles to the iPhone.
In my testing, Goggles seemed fairly accurate at recognizing books and DVDs. I also found it to be faster than Bing’s visual search. Broum stresses that Goggles is still a Google Labs project — so the company still has to put a lot of work into it before it’s ready for prime time. For example, it doesn’t yet recognize things like plants, animals, or food.
Google put together this short video to demonstrate the iPhone version of Goggles:
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Trouble with China’s iPhone 4: Crippled maps and curious search results
Users of are in for a nasty surprise: Apparently, the phone comes equipped with ensored map data that complies with Chinese government propaganda, according to .
The Chinese iPhone 4 Maps app depicts borders as the Chinese government would have it — for example, the Arunachal Pradesh region shows up as part of China, even though it’s actually administered by India today. If Chinese iPhone 4 users connect to a VPN, or virtual private network, a service which lets them get beyond the government’s firewall — they’re still stuck with the same dataset. Previously, iPhone 3GS users could log onto a VPN to view maps with correct international borders.
Even worse, the censored maps data is also missing significant amounts of street data for the rest of the world, . In Rome (and much of Europe), there are no street names at all — whereas in Paris, Montreal, and Sydney street names are only in Chinese.
In addition, users of China’s iPhone 4 are also finding that searches conducted via Safari’s Google search bar are always getting redirected to Google.cn, and they have to manually click a link to get redirected to Google.com.hk — the company’s unfiltered Hong Kong site. This isn’t necessarily a surprise — the redirect process matches the way Google searches on computers in China now work after .
What’s strange about the Chinese iPhone 4’s behavior is that it forces users to redirect from Google.cn no matter what their phone’s region is set to. Everywhere else in the world, the iPhone 4’s Safari search bar is dependent on their region settings. Even if Chinese iPhone 4 users connect to a VPN they’re still redirected to Google.cn. Previously, users of China’s iPhone 3GS were able to sign on to VPN’s to bypass Google.cn entirely.
While these software quirks are annoying, it’s still better than Apple’s first attempt at bringing the iPhone into China with the iPhone 3G — which didn’t have WiFi due to government regulations. Still, the limitations of Chinese iPhone 4s may convince some users to head back to the grey market for their iPhone 4, especially since they may be able to get the phone cheaper than Apple’s official pricing — the company sells the phone unlocked and contract-free at 16GB ($747) and 32GB ($895) memory configurations.
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