Skip to main content

April Fool and Google Compilation: 2018 Version

Image result for google april fool

Every year different teams withing Google spend considerable amount of effort - both time and money to make to come up with awesome nerdy April fool joke/products. I have started following the trend since last two years and they never seem to disappoint. What I have been able to find this year are:

Where is Waldo - Google Maps Team

Waldo Maps GIFOften Google Maps team comes up with quest/games or real worl overlays that you can interact and play in Maps. In past we have seen pac man appear in map and this year it is Waldo.
Once you open your Google Map in android or iPhone Waldo will be waving his hands at you and clicking him will take you on a quest to find Waldo in different maps location. You can play and level up. I gave up after level 3 realizing my eyes aren't that great at finding Waldo. The most interesting part of the quest seems to me that you gain badges with more quest you do and the better you are able to find it. Way to go in gamifying a April fool's joke.
More information on waldo: https://www.blog.google/products/maps/wheres-waldo-find-him-google-maps/

Google Cloud Hummus API - Google Israel

Google Wants you to serve organized data to help you make better decisions. And of course when we talk about "serving" they want to use advanced machine learning model on hummus big data warehouse to give you the Hummus API. According to Google
 "We’re extremely excited to share with you our latest Google Cloud groundbreaking technology: After enabling our customers to address senses through Speech & Vision API, we are now releasing a subset of Taste APIs started with a dish we all love - Hummus!"

Way to go. Build that Taste API :D


Gboard - Google Japan

Google Japan envisions a world where you don't even want to memorize your keyboard keys. Or want to type by swiping? Gboard lets you swipe over hardware keyboards. The physical version of Gboard collects “a ton of scribble data” applies machine learning on it to match it with the correct letters. Apparently it works for all ages and, not only do you no longer have to remember where all the letters are, but manufacturers don’t even need to print the letters on the keys anymore.
Interesting...
Want to read more about it? IN japanese of course : https://japan.googleblog.com/2018/04/tegaki.html

Googz - Google Australia

Google Australia just decided "Google" is too mainstream and most peoiple in Australian accent call it something like Googz anyway. So they rebranded Google as....yes you guessed it correctly. Googz. 
And fret not, they have all the Googz merchandise you need to remind you of the re-branding ready in store.

Did I say they re-branded the building as well....


To read the announcement, head over to: https://australia.googleblog.com/2018/04/just-call-us-googz.html

Bad Joke detector - Google Files Go team

Bad Joke Detector - Files Go
Yeah, you heard that right. Remember that little nifty app that used to show you the files you can delete to free up precious space in your android phone? The one which can detect which one are meme's and which are unnecessary files? Today it gets more superpowers to detect which bad jokes were sent to you, classify that and show them to you where you can delete those files freeing up your valuable space.
Did not see that one coming. And it claims to detect the huge amount of "Good Morning" messages we get in WhatsApp. I sure will be one to try it.


Read the announcement here: https://www.blog.google/topics/next-billion-users/no-laughing-matter-files-go-introduces-bad-joke-detector/

ChromeBook Solar Charger - Google ChromeOS Team

Soil-charging.jpgIt seems Chromebooks are also gaining superpowers. And what mighty powers. It can now harness clean renewable energy to recharge itself. But the story doesn't stop there. It can recharge itself with 
        • Solar
        • Wind
        • Compost(!)
As they say " take your Chromebook charger along and watch the battery level grow like a weed."

Read about it at: https://www.blog.google/products/chromebooks/harness-your-chromebooks-supercharging-powers/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ARCore and Arkit, What is under the hood: SLAM (Part 2)

In our last blog post ( part 1 ), we took a look at how algorithms detect keypoints in camera images. These form the basis of our world tracking and environment recognition. But for Mixed Reality, that alone is not enough. We have to be able to calculate the 3d position in the real world. It is often calculated by the spatial distance between itself and multiple keypoints. This is often called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). And this is what is responsible for all the world tracking we see in ARCore/ARKit. What we will cover today: How ARCore and ARKit does it's SLAM/Visual Inertia Odometry Can we D.I.Y our own SLAM with reasonable accuracy to understand the process better Sensing the world: as a computer When we start any augmented reality application in mobile or elsewhere, the first thing it tries to do is to detect a plane. When you first start any MR app in ARKit, ARCore, the system doesn't know anything about the surroundings. It starts pro
Post a Comment
Read more

ARCore and Arkit: What is under the hood : Anchors and World Mapping (Part 1)

Reading Time: 7 MIn Some of you know I have been recently experimenting a bit more with WebXR than a WebVR and when we talk about mobile Mixed Reality, ARkit and ARCore is something which plays a pivotal role to map and understand the environment inside our applications. I am planning to write a series of blog posts on how you can start developing WebXR applications now and play with them starting with the basics and then going on to using different features of it. But before that, I planned to pen down this series of how actually the "world mapping" works in arcore and arkit. So that we have a better understanding of the Mixed Reality capabilities of the devices we will be working with. Mapping: feature detection and anchors Creating apps that work seamlessly with arcore/kit requires a little bit of knowledge about the algorithms that work in the back and that involves knowing about Anchors. What are anchors: Anchors are your virtual markers in the real wo
Post a Comment
Read more

IRCTC blocking certain countries?

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation or most commonly known as IRCTC is the only authorized government portal in India through which someone can book a Train Ticket. It also provides booking for flights and buses but its primary use for most people is to book rail tickets online. And like thousands of other people I also use the site intermittently while booking train tickets, especially for my parents who are in India and when I want to book tickets for them. A few days back they asked me to book a ticket for them and that is when the fun started. I found out that when I tried to access the website day before yesterday (4th July 2018), instead of the familiar login page I was greeted with an error that page cannot be loaded. I thought maybe something wrong and I would try later. After a day I tried and faced the same error. Now a little bit curious since I actually never seen the site down for a prolonged time, blamed it on my Comcast connection and connecte
Post a Comment
Read more