Toddler Reviews Google Glass

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- We’ve seen Michele Bachmann and a half-naked blogger wear Google Glass over the last couple of weeks.

But those images don’t warm your heart like a two-year-old with the connected glasses on. The toddler's review of the hot new tech device might be one of the cutest things you'll see on the Internet this week.

Chris Angelini, a writer and editor at tech site Tom’s Hardware, decided to put the glasses on his two-year-old son, Lucas. The result is an adorable video of Lucas telling people to “Look at my cool glasses!” Lucas only wears the glasses for 2 minutes and 42 seconds in the video, but that’s long enough for him to document the experience of getting some watered-down apple juice, show off his Lego collection and play catch with his dad.

It’s long enough for him to point out some of the bad things about Glass too. The video, shot in a low-light room, is hard to see at times, and at the end he adds, “They’re hot!” It’s true, the glasses do get fairly warm on the right side after shooting more than a minute of video or providing GPS navigation.

The video is extremely cute, but it has also inspired some thoughtful comments from its 100,000-plus viewers, many of whom point out that Lucas’s generation will grow up with this new wearable technology. Google, however, does say that the glasses shouldn’t be worn by anyone younger than 13 since it could harm developing vision. Angelini, 33, said he doesn’t plan on allowing his son to wear the glasses at length and that when they were on, he made sure the boy was looking around and not at the small display.

But Angelini himself plans to wear them a lot and take lots of footage of his son. “As a dad, you don’t have to be passive in the child-rearing process. It allows you to be so much more active,” Angelini told ABC News. “People are trying to record every minute but they aren’t in the moment, that’s the killer app for Glass — being able to participate more in what he is doing.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Google Employee Shares Easter Eggs for Hangouts Chats

JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Google didn’t show off all of the fun features of Hangouts, the company’s new multiplatform text and video chat service at this week’s big I/O conference. If you’ve been thinking your chats have been a little too text-heavy, you can now decorate them with some animated animals.

In the chat window, you can now punch in codes to add some fun animations. For instance, typing “/streamponies” into the chat window in the web interface and hitting “enter” will prompt dancing ponies to appear.

“Some of you may [have] already figured out the hidden Easter Eggs in the new Hangouts … Keep in mind that those codes only work with Hangouts on Google+ and the Chrome Extension. Not in video calls or mobile,” Google employee Moritz Tolxdorff wrote on his Google+ page.

Tolxdorff posted a cheat sheet listing all the codes and commands to pull up different animations and chat window tweaks. In addition to the stampeding ponies, there’s a shy dinosaur (/shydino), an angry, charging pitchfork mob (/pitchforks), and you can even change the chat background by inputting a variation of the Konami “Contra Code” with your keyboard.

Maybe these bits of fun will appease those users who are disappointed by the current lack of SMS, or text messaging, support in the new Hangouts service. Though another Google employee recently mentioned on her Google+ page that SMS was “coming soon” to Hangouts, she later made an edit to the same post, saying, “Oops! We actually have nothing to announce at this time. My apologies.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

New YouTube Paid Channels Could Shake Up Industry

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Google’s YouTube is venturing into the world of paid subscription content with Thursday’s announcement of a pilot run of paid channels. Subscription prices start at $.99 monthly, but many offer a discounted yearly rate.

The program is launching with channels from National Geographic Kids, the Professional Golfer’s Association, Ultimate Fighting Championship and HDNet. Every channel currently offered has a 14-day trial period with monthly billing beginning immediately after.

Revenue for YouTube content creators have, up to this point, been ad based, but most of the paid channels in this initial offering are ad-free. Channels have subscription price and advertising information clearly posted by the “Subscribe” button, so users will know whether the channel will contain ads before signing up.

“YouTube’s decision to allow channel operators to charge monthly subscriptions gives YouTube a huge competitive advantage over Netflix and Hulu when it come to new episodic programming,” TJ Walker, a media analyst and producer/host of YouTube news channel T. J. Walker News and Comment, told ABC News. “This could be the beginning of the end for traditional cable TV companies as well.”

Walker said he won’t be charging for his channel anytime soon, but certainly understands the desire for some YouTubers to create a sustainable business model by way of paid subscription offerings.

“If producers can reach viewers and charge them subscriptions directly through YouTube, it means a brave new world where middlemen like Netflix and Hulu get squeezed out and become as irrelevant as AOL dial-up service,” said Walker.

The Google TV platform, sold in the form of set-top boxes and televisions from companies like Sony and Vizio, features a dedicated YouTube app that supports the new paid channels.

A spokesperson for YouTube told ABC News, “Currently you can watch paid channels on many recent TVs running the new YouTube TV app, Xbox and Boxee devices.” The Apple TV is not yet supported, but the YouTube representative said, adding: “We’re working to expand this to more devices, as well as giving you the ability to subscribe to paid channels from these devices.”

Walker does believe, however, the ability to easily stream this YouTube content on the big screen means huge things moving forward.

“Younger people simply think in terms of video they want to watch when and wherever they want to watch it. And thanks to devices like Apple TV and iPhones that turn into great remote controls, the traditional TV set is now just another extension from the cell phone screen and the iPad screen,” Walker said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Google Doodle Honoring Cesar Chavez is Not a Big Shift for Google

Google(NEW  YORK) --  Google chose to honor legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez with one of their Google Doodles – the temporary homepage logos used to commemorate certain days -- because it's his birthday on Sunday.

On most days, the move wouldn't stir up much controversy. But this time, some conservative sites are questioning the tech giant's decision to recognize the labor leader and not the Easter holiday, which falls on the same day.

Twitchy, a site owned by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, curated a number of tweets from people who felt insulted by the doodle.

"Better a dead lefty, them a risen Lord," wrote one man sarcastically.

"Yep. While two billion Christians around the world celebrate Easter Sunday on this 31st day of March, Google is using its famous "Doodle" search logo art to mark the birth of left-wing labor leader Cesar Chavez," reads a post on the site.

But First Things, a conservative-leaning Catholic journal, argued that it is fitting to remember Chavez on Easter Sunday. So many of his actions, the site said, were driven by his religious convictions.

"For Chavez, social reform was never merely external," reads a post on the site. "Without peace of spirit and purity of heart, there was little point in pursuing justice. Collective bargaining, just wages, shorter workdays: for Chavez none of these made sense outside the fact of his risen Lord."

While Google Doodles have recognized other religious holidays before Google hasn't produced an Easter doodle since 2000. In other words, this move is not exactly a departure.

And, as Google's site points out, the Doodles often honor well-known and not-so-well-known historical figures, from Dr. Seuss to Frank Zamboni, creator of the ice rink resurfacing machine.

Still, that hasn't kept people on Twitter from threatening to leave Google for Bing, which has Easter Eggs on its homepage.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Sources: Google Working on Smartwatch, Too

KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- The year of the smartwatch is upon us. According to rumors, Apple has a team of 100 working on a watch that works with the iPhone, and Samsung has confirmed that it is working on a watch of its own. And now sources tell The Financial Times that Google is developing a watch to work “as an extension to the smartphones using [Android].”

According to a “person briefed on the project,” Google’s Android team is developing the smartwatch. The source also said that “the [Android] project is separate from Samsung’s efforts.”

When asked about the smartwatch rumor, a Google spokesperson told ABC News that the company “doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation.”

The watch, like other smartwatches, will likely pair with an Android phone and allow one to view messages and incoming call notifications right on the watch’s display. Google did file for a patent describing a “smart-watch including flip up display” in 2011. This patent was approved late last year.

The wearable gadget space seems to be drawing the interest of many companies. Pebble, the smartwatch that works with the iPhone and Android, beat all the odds on Kickstarter, receiving more than 85,000 orders for the watch and more than $10 million from people who wanted to back the company. Many companies have also joined the fitness tracker market, including Nike, Motorola and Jawbone.

Of course, Google is no stranger to wearable computing items right now. Google Glass, those futuristic, Internet-connected eyeglasses that show digital data right before your eyes, is now undergoing testing, and Google plans to release a version by the end of the year. Google is expected to talk more about its Glass project and its next versions of Android at its annual Google I/O conference in May.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Google Announces 'Keep' Note-Syncing Service

JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Evernote, OneNote and other to-do lists apps have new competition, in the form of Google's new service, Google Keep. The app, announced by Google Wednesday afternoon, allows you to sync your notes and to-do lists across your computer, phone and tablet using your Google account.

“With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you,” Google’s Katharine Kuan detailed on Google’s blog Wednesday. Google then uses its Google Drive service and servers to sync your content so you can get those important thoughts or notes anywhere.

The app works very similarly to the other note apps, like Evernote and OneNote. Once a user downloads the app, which is available only for Android 4.0 phones right now, they can take notes and then access them via the app on the web, which is located in their Google Drive or at https://drive.google.com/keep. Users can also upload voice notes, which can be transcribed, and even photos. Notes can be color coded or turned into checklists by adding check boxes.

Google Keep joins a host of other note syncing applications, the most popular being Evernote. As of June 2012, Evernote had 34 million users. While Evernote is a general note-syncing app, other apps like Wunderlist and Remember the Milk offer cross-device to-do list services.

Google’s service is in the early stages -- it is only available for the web and select Android phones; there are no iPhone or other platform apps yet.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Google to Shut Down Google Reader RSS Service

KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Google’s doing some spring cleaning, again.  The company, as it has in years past, is killing some of its services, most notably its RSS Web application Google Reader.

The service, for those who never used it, allows you to view all your RSS feeds -- headlines and articles from news organizations -- in one central spot.  Come July 1, though, you won’t be able to read anything using the application; you won’t be able to use it at all.

While the 7-year-old service is one of the most popular RSS services on the Web, Google says the number of users has declined.  It also says it would prefer to focus on fewer products.

“We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience,” Google’s Alan Green wrote on Google’s blog late Wednesday night.

When reached by ABC News, Google would not divulge the number of Google Reader users, but it does acknowledge on its blog that its users are “devoted.”

“Google Reader” trended on both Twitter and Google Wednesday night.  Others took to signing a Change.org petition, which has more than 12,000 signatures.

Still, while there are those impassioned fans, many never used RSS and now get their news through social media service like Twitter or Facebook.

“RSS never caught on as mainstream consumer experience but Google Reader provided a powerful resource as a back-end aggregator that could sync content across applications and platforms,” Michael Gartenberg, Gartner research director, told ABC News.

The Next Web has reported that Google decided to pull the plug on Reader and devote those resources to Google+, the company’s social network.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Forget Typing, Google Says Search Is Going to Be Like "Star Trek"

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images(AUSTIN, Texas) -- In the future, the experience of searching the web is going to be like something out of Star Trek.  Or at least, that’s what Google’s vision is.

“The destiny of search is to become that Star Trek computer and that’s what we are building,” Google’s Search Head Amit Singhal said at SXSW Interactive on Sunday.

Singhal shared that computers will know what people want and users won’t have to type their queries into a small box on a clean white page.

“You can walk up to a computer and say, hey, computer,” Singhal explained.

Of course, that is dependent on other technologies, including improved voice control, touch and sensory tech, he said.  Singhal told ABC News something similar a few months ago.

Google has already started showing that sort of capability with Glass.  One of the main ways of controlling the glasses, which project digital information over your eyes, is through voice.

“OK, Glass.  Google Jellyfish,” a woman says to her glasses in a teaser video released last month.  The results appear right in front of her eyes.

“These are some of the best times in search,” Singhal said.  “All the technology is coming together: speak recognition, knowledge graph, natural language understanding -- there are new devices coming out, so when you marry all this, tomorrow is looking bright.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Google Updates iPhone Maps So You Can Find Places, Friends

Google(NEW YORK) -- Have you ever gone to a new city and had trouble finding your way around, cursing as you look at pages upon pages of search results to find a restaurant for dinner or just a quick place to grab a cup of coffee and a Danish?

Google hopes to lend a helping hand.

On Tuesday, Google announced an update for its Google Maps app for iPhone to include new search icons that, the company said, will make it easier to find places and look up saved friends’ addresses. Released Tuesday morning, it can now be downloaded from the Apple App Store.

These features have been available already for Android, but iPhone users had to look up the address of a specific destination, and type it into the search bar. Now, users will be presented with icons for restaurants, coffee shops, bars and gas stations, which they can tap to search quickly for nearby locations.

In total, there are 13 different types of places users can search by, including hotels, hospitals and ATMs.

“So if you’re in a rush and need a quick coffee, just tap the search box, then the coffee cup icon, to see the cafes closest to you,” Google said in a blog post.

The new update also makes it possible for users to look up their friends’ addresses by typing their names in the search box. If users have saved their friends’ addresses in Google Contacts, the app will show them in the search results.

The update also integrated Google Contacts into the Google Maps app. This means users who have their friends’ addresses saved in their Google Contacts can now look up where their friends live by simply typing a friend’s name in the app’s search box. The address will then pop up on the map, making it easy to get to that Saturday night house party.

This is the first major update to the Google Maps app since it was released in December.  The road to a user-friendly maps feature has been far from smooth for iPhone and other iOS devices.

When Apple released the iPhone 5 and its iOS operating system in September, it replaced Google Maps with its own Maps app. However, widespread criticism over glitches, including misplaced historic places of interest and jumbled locations, forced the company to bring back Google’s mapping service.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Google Stock Passes $800

KIMIHIRO HOSHINO/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Shares of Google passed a milestone of $800 Tuesday morning, the morning after a report of possible Google retail stores in the works.

Google stock rose to $803 at 10:15 a.m. EST.  It reached $803.58 earlier on Tuesday, the first day of trading after the long Presidents’ Day weekend.

The technology company, based in Mountain View, Calif., reached $700 a share more than five years ago.

Late Monday night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google Inc. had plans to launch retail stores to display its consumer electronics products in direct competition with Apple Inc.’s widely popular Apple stores.  The newspaper cited people familiar with the matter.

Apple has about 400 stores in 14 countries.  Tech competitor Microsoft has 64 stores, including 31 permanent retail locations plus 33 pop-up locations.

Google’s smartphones with its Android operating system are currently sold on its Google Play website, through cellphone carriers and retail stores like Best Buy.

Last year, Google introduced its first Nexus tablet with the Nexus 7 and affordable Chromebook laptops.  Months later, it introduced its second, the Nexus 10.  It has already released a few versions of an affordable Chromebook laptop built by Samsung.

Google trades at about 20 times its 2013 earnings estimates, versus rival Apple, which trades at 10 times this year’s profit estimates.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio