Google unveils first 10-inch Nexus tablet

Google unveils first 10-inch Nexus tablet

Hugo Barra, Android at Google Director of Product Management, holds up the Nexus 10 tablet at a Google announcement in San Francisco, Monday, Oct. 29, 2012. Photo: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Google Inc unveiled a larger version of its Nexus-branded tablet computer on Monday, and updated its mobile gadget and online content offerings as competition with Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp heats up ahead of the holiday sales season.

The device follows a spate of new product launches by the technology leaders in recent weeks, including Apple's iPad Mini last week and software-maker Microsoft's first-ever home-built tablet, the Surface.

Google, the world's No.1 Internet search engine, has pushed deeper into the hardware business at a time when consumers are increasingly accessing the Web on mobile devices.

Google's new Nexus 10, made in partnership with consumer electronics company Samsung Electronics Co, is the first 10-inch tablet to come to market under Google's Nexus brand. The device, with prices starting at $299, will be available on November 13 in the United States and seven other countries, Google said in its official blog on Monday.

Google was scheduled to introduce the device at a media event in New York on Monday, but was forced to cancel because of Hurricane Sandy.

The Nexus 10. Photo: AFP

Google also said it was expanding its online movie and music retail businesses to several countries in Europe.

And the company introduced an improvement to its online-music storage service. The new "matching" feature scans songs in a consumer's music collection and automatically creates an online or "cloud-based" library of the same tracks which consumers can access from any device or computer.

Google said the music matching feature, which only works with tracks that are part of the Google Play store's music catalog, will be available in Europe on November 13 and in the United States soon after.

Google also updated its smaller, Nexus 7 tablet released earlier this year. It increased the storage on the $199 version of the device to 16GB from 8GB, and introduced a new $299 version of the Nexus 7 with a cellular data service option. Google also unveiled a new Nexus 4 smartphone, made in partnership with LG Electronics, that features a quad-core processor and a 4.7-inch display

Apple iPad mini's screen is inferior: Reviews

Apple iPad mini's screen is inferior: Reviews

iPad mini's 1024 x 768 resolution was a big step backwards from the iPad's much-touted Retina display, and underperformed the rival Kindle and Nexus, the two reviewers agreed.
SAN FRANCISCO: Apple's entry in the accelerating mobile tablet race squeezes about 35 per cent more viewing space onto a lighter package than rival devices from Google or Amazon.com, but it sports inferior resolution and a lofty price tag, two influential reviewers wrote on Tuesday. 

The iPad mini, which starts at $329 versus the $199 for Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD, is easy to hold with one hand, eliminating a drawback of the 10-inch iPad,Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg wrote in one of the first major reviews of a gadget introduced last week. 

Both Mossberg and New York Times columnist David Pogue offered kudos for cramming most of its full-sized cousin's functions onto a smaller device, as advertised. 

But the iPad mini's 1024 x 768 resolution was a big step backwards from the iPad's much-touted Retina display, and underperformed the rival Kindle and Nexus, the two reviewers agreed. 

Mossberg said Apple chose to go with a lower-quality display because the existing 250,000-plus iPad applications could only run unmodified in two resolutions - and the higher level would have sapped too much power. 

"The lack of true HD gives the Nexus and Fire HD an advantage for video fans. In my tests, video looked just fine, but not as good as on the regular iPad," Mossberg wrote. 

The original iPad was launched in 2010 and went on to upend the personal computer industry, spawning a raft of similar devices. The iPad mini marks Apple's first foray into a smaller 7-inch segment that Amazon's Kindle Fire now dominates, demonstrating demand exists for such a device. 

Apple, making its boldest consumer hardware move since Tim Cook took the helm from late co-founder Steve Jobs, hopes the smaller tablet can beat back incursions onto its home turf of consumer electronics. 

"In shrinking the iconic iPad, Apple has pulled off an impressive feat," Mossberg wrote. "It has managed to create a tablet that's notably thinner and lighter than the leading small competitors with 7-inch screens, while squeezing in a significantly roomier 7.9-inch display. 

"And it has shunned the plastic construction used in its smaller rivals to retain the iPad's sturdier aluminum and glass body." 

Mossberg, whose reviews are followed closely by consumers and tech companies alike, wrote that the iPad mini did as advertised by bringing the full-sized iPad experience onto a smaller screen. 

He noted, however, that the device was too large to fit easily into pockets. It exhibited battery life of about 10 hours and 27 minutes, an hour more than the Kindle Fire at the same settings, but about 17 minutes less than the Nexus 7. 

"By pricing the Mini so high, Apple allows the $200 class of seven-inch Android tablets and readers to live," Pogue wrote. 

"But the iPad mini is a far classier, more attractive, thinner machine. It has two cameras instead of one. Its fit and finish are far more refined. And above all, it offers that colossal app catalog, which Android tablet owners can only dream about."

Google Celebrates Halloween With Pumpkin Carving Google Doodle

Google Celebrates Halloween With Pumpkin Carving Google Doodle

Google goes all out for this years Halloween doodle

Today is Halloween. A day full of costumed adolescents and all the candy you can eat, with out your child knowing you stole it from them of course. Sure the candy is the highlight of the holiday, but another big part is the tradition of carving a macabre face into a jack-o-lantern.

If you enjoy pumpkin carving, you’ll be sure to get a kick out of todays Google Doodle, as they team from Mountain View have really gone all out this year. Sure, Halloween is one of the Doodles that Google does every year. Usually they just do an illustration of some sort, but this year they’ve put together a stop motion logo which features six pumpkins being carved over the course of eight hours. Below you can see the Google Doodle for yourself with some details of how the thing came together.

“To celebrate Halloween this year, the doodle team wanted to capture that fascinating transformation that takes place when carving a pumpkin. Instead of picking up a few pumpkins from the grocery store, however, we decided to work on six giant pumpkins, specially delivered from nearby Half Moon Bay (some weighing well over 1,000 pounds). What you see is a timelapse video of the approximately eight hours we spent carving in the middle of our Mountain View, Calif. campus.”

If you’re interested in seeing some behind the scenes of Google’s huge Doodle undertaking, you can see a video below of how the Halloween doodle came to fruition.

Happy Halloween! Google Celebrates with an Interactive Doodle

Google users in the U.S. are still stuck with the boring old Google logo, but users in places like Australia are being treated with Google’s new Halloween Doodle – an interactive experience complete with sound.

On this Doodle, users are greeted with a bunch of closed doors, which they must open with a click. There are five doors in all, each revealing a ghostly/monster depicting of the G-O-O-G-L-E. Once you open the doors to reveal the creatures, you can click on them again to interact.

There are a couple more clickable areas on the Doodle, but I’ll let you find them on your own. Here’s the Doodle pre-interaction:

And post-interaction:

Last year, Google celebrated Halloween with a special pumpkin carving doodle. They used six giant pumpkins for the doodle, some weighing in at over 1,000 pounds.

Happy Halloween! Google spooks with an interactive doodle

Happy Halloween! Google spooks with an interactive doodle
New Delhi: October 31 is celebrated as Halloween in a number of countries around the world and Google is celebrating the event taking users on a visit to a haunted house on many of its home pages.

The Google Happy Halloween doodle features a haunted mansion (numbered 13) with many spooky inhabitants, who double up as letters of the Google logo. The characters reveal themselves when you knock (click) on the doors of the haunted house. To add to the atmosphere there is also an eerie sound playing in the background. The faint hearted though can turn it off with a click of a mouse.

A blue one-eyed octopus stands for 'G' in the Google logo, a pair of red and yellow eyes behind the second door from the left are the two 'Os', the second 'G' is a veiled ghost. A clattering skeleton is the 'L' and a smiley face that turns into a monster represents the 'E'. An apparition also appears between the skeleton and the smiley monster.

There is also a black alley cat, a crowing crow and a spider for extra effect. A number of jack-o'-lanterns rest on the steps of the mansion. It is only when you click on all the interactive elements on the Happy Halloween! Google doodle and the alley cat jumps out of the frame that the page redirects to the search results page for the keyword "Happy Halloween!".

Halloween is also called All Hallows' Eve. As it falls on the eve of All Saints' Day, it has a religious significance for some Christians otherwise it is nowadays observed largely as a secular celebration.

Google doodle celebrates Halloween

Google doodle celebrates Halloween

Ghouls and ghosts hiding behind doors are brought to life at the click of a mouse to form company logo

Google Doodle celebrates Halloween

Google is marking Halloween with an interactive doodle that animates some spooky happenings on a street where assorted ghouls and creatures are brought to life by users clicking on four front doors.

The inhabitants behind the doors, including a central one which is suitably numbered 13, double up to form the letters of the Google logo.

They include a blue one-eyed octopus, which stands for 'G', a pair of red and yellow eyes which provide the two 'Os' and a veiled ghost which forms the second 'G'. A skeleton is the 'L' while a smiley face that turns into a monster represents the 'E'.

An eerie soundtrack plays in the background, although those of a nervous disposition can turn the sound off.

The Guardian has set up a Halloween Flickr group following on from the fun last year when readers posted pictures of their ghoulish gourds and creative costumes.

Happy Halloween! Google doodles a trick-or-treat surprise

Happy Halloween! Google doodles a trick-or-treat surprise

Happy Halloween! doodle is Google's Halloween surprise for visitors across the globe. Halloween is a yearly celebration observed worldwide on the last day of October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows, hence the name all-hallows-eve, which got shortened to Halloween.

The doodle shows a street with a series of houses. Visitors can trick-or-treat by clicking on the door of each house. Clicking each door reveals a surprise, just like in real-life trick-or-treating. In this case, there's an octopus behind one of the doors, a spooky pair of eyes behind another, while yet another has a skeleton. Of course, no neighbourhood, real or virtual, would be complete on Halloween without pumpkins carved into jack-o'-lanterns.

But in a year when Abraham Lincoln was depicted as a vampire hunter and zombies are everywhere, gory costumes that were once reserved for preteens and teens are now available in ever-smaller sizes.

"For the last couple of years, darker is where it's been at," says Melissa Sprich, vice president of Halloween merchandising for Party City. For babies and toddlers, Sprich says "darker" may mean dressing as a devil this year, rather than a cheerful dinosaur. But for all other ages, many parents are seeking vampires, zombies and "the Freddies, Jasons and Chuckys" even for kids too young to see those characters on screen.

David J. Skal, who has chronicled America's fascination with horror since the 1990s in numerous books, including "The Monster Show," says he's surprised at the level of "monster-ization of children" we're seeing this year.

He points out that for centuries, frightening masks and "scary stories have been used to pass on a kind of coming-of-age message to children that the world is not always a safe and welcoming place." Perhaps, he says, this year parents are especially preoccupied with just how unwelcoming the world seems.

Of course, this year Halloween comes in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, with celebrations ranging from non-existent in the severely effected parts of the US, to muted in others. Elsewhere in the world, some Catholic bishops in Poland say that Halloween is harmful because it promotes "diabolical" behaviour and are asking believers not to observe it.

Archbishop Andrzej Dziega in Szczecinsaid in letter to his parishioners that under the vestige of fun, Halloween can be "destroying the spiritual life." The "tricks" hide "diabolical attitudes" by encouraging readiness to harm the others. He asked believers not to observe Halloween.

Happy Haloween

Happy Haloween!!!!!