Innovative Tech of the Week | Google's Challenge to Siri

The only thing better than an automated personal assistant programmed into your phone that recognizes your voice? One that's also integrated with the neverending universe of possibilities that is Google search. Android has just seriously stepped their game up with Google Now, Siri's latest challenger. 

Steve Jobs said from the beginning that Siri is not an attempt to enter the search business, but rather an application built to customize user experience and avoid the ambiguity of search. But Google Now incorporates all of the customization of Siri (minus the witty jokes...for now) and enhances that customization with the power of Google search. 

"I was in San Francisco last week to cover Google I/O and meet with some other companies in the area. I had a meeting in Mountain View on Friday morning. Google Now sent me a notification about 45 minutes before my meeting that said I should leave if I wanted to make it on time. It even took traffic into account. Incredible." 

Google Now will be released in Android's upcoming version Jelly Bean, but one glaring problem remains. Android devices are infamously not equipped to handle operating system updates. According to this article, only 7% of Android users are even using the most current version of the OS, Ice Cream Sandwich, that launched seven months ago. 

Click here to learn more about Google Now 

Tech of the Week | The Endangered Languages Project

"An online collaborative effort to protect global linguistic diversity," Google has launched the interactive EndageredLanguages.com and the design lives up to the mission. The site is an online space for people to learn and share languages in an effort to slow the extinction of some 50% of the world's languages expected to die out by 2100. Check out the video then visit the website to see the number of "dying" languages right here in the United States...

Click here to read more about Google's Endangered Languages Project

The Must-Have Technology Tools, Part 2 – In The Cloud | Construction Today

from SmartBidNet.com

This is the second of a three-part series. 

By James Benham, President of JB Knowledge Technologies, Inc., maker of SmartBidNet

Last week we covered “All Things Google” that should be a part of your Tech Toolbox. This week, we’ll discuss a couple of cloud-based tools that are transforming the way project participants communicate and collaborate from bid to build.

Traditional Plan and File Sharing
Thanks to the proliferation of “the cloud,” most general contractors now realize the cost savings in going paperless. The entirety of preconstruction documents and data can be shared online with the click of the button via preconstruction software like SmartBidNet or file sharing sites likeDropBox and YouSendIt, eliminating the need for printers and scanners while putting documents and communications that are too big to email online with viewing and/or editing access to all those you approve.

Click here to read the full article in Construction Today 

New Technology of the Week | The Future of Transportation

No need for explanation today. Just a photo. 

 

Click here to learn more about Google's self-driving car technology

Cool Technology of the Week | Wavii

Wavii's all encompassing tag line/mission is to "Make Facebook out of Google." Essentially compiling all the information across the internet (including search engines, social platforms, and accessible applications) for any given topic and arranging that information into an asthetically pleasing and navigable Facebook-esque newsfeed. It's a service you read about and go, "Huh, I guess we don't really have anything like that, do we?"  

"With the company's current service, for instance, users can set up a newsfeed dedicated to a particular person or topic. The service will alert you when anything big happens with Kim Kardashian, Mitt Romney, or IBM, and it will do so in plain English... Aoun and his engineering team have built a system that analyzes hundreds of thousands of articles, blogs, tweets, and other websites as they're posted to the net and then tags them with metadata that describes the information they hold."

However, the problem, critics are saying, is not getting all this information aggregated in real-time, it's making sure the information is qualified and relevant. Such an application is very enticing to the likes of trend abusing spammers like those on Twitter or content farms more concerned about selling ad space than providing useful content. We thinks they are bound to fight the same good fight as Google in sorting through information. But if they can figure that out, Wavii has our vote.

Click here to read more about Wavii's technology

Cool Technology of the Week | Project Glass

Anything we try to write or summarize about this technology won't do it justice. So we'll just direct you straight to the source.

Click here to watch the video about Project Glass that will quite literally change your view of the future

JBK Writes Guest Post for FSC|inter@ctive Blog: Chuck Norris Has a Zoo full of Google Pandas

Throughout 2011, Google implemented a number of bold updates, referred to collectively as the ‘Panda Updates,’ to its Page Rank algorithm that have caused much debate among marketers, designers, and developers. Some websites have seen numbers soar, some have seen concerning drops, but all have had to take a good look at their SEO strategy.

Google’s Page Rank algorithmdetermines the results someone gets every time they ask the search engine one of life’s essential questions, i.e. ‘What is a Twihard?’ As any service provider should, Google is constantly working to improve their solution and make this algorithm produce more and more useful results to the web searcher every time. As Google has discussed in many an interview, the challenge lies in determining an objective formula that produces seemingly subjective results. Inevitably, the formula isn’t perfect, so it’s important for website managers and marketers to know how and where their site (and their competitors’) are plugged into the equation and what comes out on the other side of the ‘Search’ button. Let’s take a look at the 2011 updates to Page Rank and why your SEO strategy needs to adjust accordingly...

Click here to read the full article 

Mobile Technology in Construction

The two most well quoted predictions in the mobile device industry are:
1) 50% of American mobile users will own a smartphone by Christmas 2011
2) One in three of Americans will own a tablet PC by 2015

comScore statistics from June 2011 show that with only a few months left until Christmas, the amount of smartphones users is only at about 34%. And we’ll give prediction 2 at least a year or two before cross-examining, but note that as of June 2011 still only 8% of Americans own tablets.

Click to read more ...