developers

This Friday the folks behind ARCore reminded developers that Android is a virtual playground of augmented reality tricks and tools. Evan Hardesty Parker, Software Engineer at Google working with ARCore, revealed a bit about the latest update to ARCore this afternoon. In version 1.7 of ARCore, Hardesty suggests that they are "focused on creative elements like AR selfies and animation" and are aiming to assist developers in improving the "core user experience" in their AR apps.

Continue Reading

Today we're taking a peek at the coded messages Google's sent with regard to its 2019 Google I/O developers conference. The conference will be taking place on May 7th, 8th, and 9th, 2019, at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. Those are the basic details - from there it gets interesting.

Continue Reading

This week the creators of postmarketOS came out of the shadows to show what they've been making for the past year. The software system they've created takes old Android devices - and some new - and boots an alternate operating system. This is a Linux distro that boots working software to Android devices that would otherwise be long outside their final official software update.

Continue Reading

It's that time in the world of Android - time to pull the plug on Android apps not prepared properly for the coming of 64-bit CPUs. It's not as if these newer, faster computing processors aren't already here in Android devices. They've been here before - and they're not going away any time soon. As such, Google's announced their "TIME'S UP" marker for apps that haven't made way for 64-bit hardware - the future of smartphones in general, that is to say.

Continue Reading

Earlier this week it was reported by Improbable that their system SpatialOS was in violation of an updated terms of service from Unity. Because of this update, said Improbable, SpatialOS games might not work in the near future - at least not with Unity tech. That would've been a major problem for some games/developers if it were true - but it wasn't. At least, not entirely. It wasn't the entirety of the story - so says an update from Unity.

Continue Reading

A change to Unity's terms of service (Tos) has left a cloud-based multiplayer service provider in trouble today. Improbable has announced that all Unity-built games using its SpatialOS multiplayer service are now in violation of Unity's updated ToS. This applies to live games as well, which has the potential to be particularly problematic.

Continue Reading

Today the folks at AOSP (Android Open Source Project) at Google revealed their newest move to make the "OSP" part of AOSP far more real. Google owns Android, yes, but they've also kept the Open Source Project bit a reality since the very beginning. This week the developers at Google released a tool that'll make it far easier for 3rd-party (read: non-Google) developers to lend their skills to the development of AOSP, and potentially play a part in guiding what takes priority in Android development, and when.

Continue Reading

In the history of smartphones, never before had such a tone been heard at such a volume. In Android, specifically on Google-made smartphones, there's a sound that's played at the end of any phone call. This is the "end call tone" and it is very loud. Good news for those users that do not love loud noises: Google's found a fix - for the most part.

Continue Reading

Amazon has made its machine learning educational courses available to all developers through AWS, the company has announced. These are the same courses used to train Amazon's own engineers, giving developers a unique opportunity to learn to new skills and companies a way to boost their employees' knowledge. The courses are offered as part of the AWS Training and Certification Machine Learning program.

Continue Reading

Apple’s Siri, one of if not the first smart assistants in the consumer market, may have improved in the latest iOS update but the market is still largely dominated by Amazon Echo and Google Assistant. And in that race, Amazon not only has a head start, it also has an advantage in terms of the number of third-party Alexa-enabled devices. That number may soon become even higher now that Amazon has made available its Alexa Mobile Accessory (AMA) Kit to make it easier for accessory makers to tap into Amazon’s platform.

Continue Reading

Today users of Google Pixel and other Android 9 Pie devices (if they're lucky) have the ability to work with Google's Digital Wellbeing app. Before now, users of Google Pixel devices with Android 9 Pie were able to join the Digital Wellbeing Beta. This included all users with said requirements, and did not require that the users be a part of the Android P Beta Program. Now Digital Wellbeing is available for all - with some basic requirements.

Continue Reading

There's a new web app for Chrome called Squoosh this week, made by Google to prove the next generation of web apps are viable. That might seem pretty boring to everyone that's already got their traditional apps already downloaded - but the future is coming. With this app, Developer Advocate Jake Archibald and Drawsplainer Mariko Kosaka show how Javascript in a web browser can make the impossible task of up-scaling a photo quite possible indeed.

Continue Reading