Ramblings & rumbles

parislemon:

If true, it’s really interesting. When I started hearing that Apple was working with Nuance last year on the Siri stuff, digging in, I learned that one of the reasons why Google was one of the few companies with their own voice technology was thanks to Cohen. Nuance is known to be very aggressive with pursuing lawsuits over their IP, which leads to a lot of partnerships — like Apple. Google was able to maneuver these waters without a Nuance partnership because Cohen was a co-founder of — wait for it — Nuance. And, more importantly, holds several of his own patents in the space.

Google is clearly working on their own direct Siri competitor for Android. And it was presumed that Cohen — and his patents — would be the key to this. But if he’s now gone from Google, it raises a lot of questions. 

(via Dan Primack)

parislemon:

I would say “case closed”, but we all know how much Google loves the word “open” — they’re asking for a mistrial. 

Seriously though, this sounds like a mixed bag. A loss for Google, but not a full loss. This is probably going to take several more weeks/months to fully play out.

More interesting is the macro picture. This is yet another headache surrounding Android, the “free” and “open” OS which has now been found to be infringing on someone else’s copyrights and which the majority of the big OEMs pay a licensing fee to Microsoft — not Google — to use. 

parislemon:

John Gruber thinking out loud about John Battelle’s assertion that Apple could cut the company off by restricting necessary iOS remote access:

But I think the way Apple could most hurt Pebble is not by changing the SDK, but by releasing its own linked-to-your-iPhone wristwatch gadget. (Imagine, say, an iPod Nano with Pebble-like features and a LunaTik-style strap.)

At first, it’s sort of strange to think about how many of the huge tech-related Kickstarter projects have revolved around watches and iOS devices in some way. (Remember that LunaTik started with Kickstarter at first also.) But actually, it’s not that strange at all. 

These successes say that there’s clearly a big demand for something along these lines. Add to the equation products like the Jawbone Up and the Nike FuelBand and things start to get really interesting.

Will Apple make a wrist device? I don’t know. But they should at the very least be thinking about it.

All I know is that at least 50 times a day I reach in my pocket to see why my phone just buzzed. A new email? A DM? An iMessage? Some sports score alert? Instagram? Path? Facebook? Foursquare?

I reach into my pocket, pull out my iPhone, turn on the screen, see the notification, then turn off the screen, then put the phone back in my pocket. 

Imagine if I could just look at my wrist? 

Pebble gets us close to this dream (which is why I bought one and you should too), but not fully there. Maybe Apple opens up new device APIs, or maybe they build that new device themselves. I’d be fine with either.

parislemon:

Wil Wheaton:

Just let me thumbs up something, without forcing me to “upgrade” to G+, you dickheads.

The problem, as Wheaton points out, isn’t that Google+ is a bad product — with the latest redesign, it’s actually pretty well done — it’s that Google is being way way way way too aggressive in shoving it in everyone’s face. 

I imagine they see it as the product being good so why not leverage their massive properties to drive usage? The problem remains that this is not natural. Creating a “better” Facebook or Twitter has always been the wrong way for Google to go about social. That battle was over before it began. For the millionth time, it’s just like Bing versus Google in search.