sdk

Google has announced the launch of a Google Assistant SDK developer preview, opening the door for Google's personal assistant to exist on many devices. Google highlights some potential uses for its software, including for use on a smart mirror with voice functionality or on a DIY robot. This paves the way for a slew of new devices beyond the bounds of Google Home and select currently supported Android devices.

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Robots with personality aren't new, but Anki's Cozmo has broader goals than just entertainment: it wants to bring advanced coding techniques to the mass market. Announced last month, Cozmo - a palm-sized robot that uses your smartphone for a brain - may look like a toy but its companion SDK is arguably just as ambitious as that of iOS or Android.

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Amazon's line of Echo speakers and the virtual assistant Alexa are constantly getting updated with new features and connected services, but the company has now revealed that the number of third-party skills available has topped 1,000. That's a lot of new abilities for Alexa that developers have created, resulting in useful features like the ability to check bank accounts, make travel plans, and even order a pizza, all via voice commands.

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Qualcomm has a vested interest in smarter mobile devices: it wants to power even more of them with its own Snapdragon chips. To that end, today sees the launch of the Qualcomm Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine an SDK for the Snapdragon 820 chipset that promises a simpler path to deep-learning software and artificial intelligence on phones, tablets, wearables, and even in cars.

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Forget Alexa, when it comes to digital companionship Jibo is aiming to make a faint Echo of Amazon's connected speaker. Handiwork of a team of roboticists, animators, and speech recognition specialists, Jibo raised millions with its promise of social robotics: now, the "family robot" is ready to embrace whatever new abilities third-party coders can come up with. I caught up with Jonathan Ross, Head of SDK Development at Jibo, for an exclusive preview of the new developer toolkit ahead of its public demonstration at SXSW this weekend.

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Facebook announced this week that it was making its SDK available for developers working with the new Apple TV's tvOS. While the company highlights that the SDK will allow developers to incorporate social experiences into their Apple TV apps, the greatest benefit could be the ability to make use of Facebook Login, which lets users sign in to apps with their social network account.

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This morning Samsung revealed their Gear S2 smartwatch with Tizen, the company's own software operating system. This afternoon they've released a public software developer kit (SDK) for creators of apps and software experiences. This means that in addition to the apps already connected with the device, developers everywhere will have the opportunity to create for Tizen on the smartwatch. In addition to this SDK, Samsung has opened their Gear S2 seller site for developers and partners to register their Gear S2 applications.

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This morning Android 6.0 Marshmallow (or just Android Marshmallow, if you prefer), was revealed by Google. With this big reveal game the final SDK for the system as well as Android Marshmallow Preview 3 (after M 2 and M 1) for several Nexus devices. For those of you that own the Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 9, or Nexus Player, you're in luck. Remember that these downloads are recommended for developers only and should be treated as such.

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Unless you're a Final Fantasy fan or at least an avid gamer, the company's name might mean little to you. That might be well and good since Shinra Technologies barely has anything to do with the game franchise, other than being spun off from Square Enix. And unlike its in-game counterpart, Shinra isn't obsessed with sucking the world dry of resources. Instead, it is actually interested in building worlds. Virtual worlds, that is. And its first plan of action to make available the Community Cloud Development Kit to indie game developers for free.

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Amazon's Echo may have seemed like a gimmick, but the retail behemoth has kicked the digital assistant into overdrive by throwing it open to developers. Third-party apps will be able to integrate themselves with Echo courtesy of the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK), while hardware manufacturers that want to bake Amazon's speech-controlled helper into their devices can do so with the new Alexa Voice Service (AVS). To sweeten the deal and encourage voice-tech adoption, Amazon is also launching a $100m Alexa Fund.

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Just days before Apple's WWDC 2015 - their yearly developer conference - we're having another close-as-possible look at what'll be shown by the company. Here we're highlighting the most important bits, running down the software that'll be shown off in San Francisco. While there's a possibility that Apple COULD reveal some new hardware, we'd suggest you didn't bet on it. This year's developer conference will be all about developers, as it was always meant to be. This list includes iOS 9, OS X 10.11, HomeKit, Beats Streaming Music, and the Apple Watch Native SDK.

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NVIDIA just launched its shiny new SHIELD console, both the regular 16 GB model and the 500 GB "Pro" version, just in time for Google I/O last week and Computex this week. But as sweet as a gaming device might be, it's strength can only really be measured by the amount of content available for it. And to help create more content for its SHIELD devices, which in this case means Android games, NVIDIA is introducing a new tool based off its GameWorks tools called, what else, AndroidWorks.

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