Google Now's smartphone is the real deal | Hacker News Reader

Google Now's smartphone is the real deal

winsupersite.com

> But Windows Phone is entering a dangerous time, one in which its competitors are starting to catch up and even surpass the innovations of Microsoft’s mobile platform.

What alternate universe was this article written in? I've wanted to give Windows Phone a chance since they released the newer version, but it literally has nothing to offer other than a slightly more minimalistic default UI. Does no one remember the "Get Smoked by a Windows Phone" contest that Microsoft stacked in their favor only to get beaten by Android anyway? [1]

News flash: You can configure any Android phone to have the same interface and functionality of WP7, and you've been able to for years.

[1] http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone-chall...

A killer feature of Google Now that was actually helpful (no, baseball scores don't count) is when it detects you are traveling.

I had a receipt from EventBrite in my Gmail for a conference in Chicago. The day I drove up there, Google Now knew about the trip (I didn't even add it to my calendar) and had downloaded the trip directions. When I lost 4G on the way, it was pretty awesome to have the map available offline. I usually print off directions as a backup, but I had forgotten this time and Google Now really helped me.

Just one anecdote, but it completely sold me on Google Now.

Google Now has a lot of promise, but I've been using it a bit since it was first released, and it's never actually provided me with any really useful information.

The promise behind Google Now is amazing, but it simply doesn't work well enough yet to be any kind of consideration. Here's hoping they manage to get the actual software in-line with the promise eventually!

The user experience with Google Now varies heavily depending on your usage habits and the type of phone you have. The only thing Google Now showed me for months were outdated, inaccurate weather 'forecasts' that made absolutely no sense (and opening it took more than 30 seconds on my old Nexus S). Boy, was I disappointed.

But if you set your Settings to the right items, you enable all your Search History, and everything else, and you have a modern phone like a Nexus 4, Google Now is amazing. Really, really amazing. It's definitely there and it works fantastically well, if you care to set it up right.

Any guides on setting it up right? I've got all search history and everything enabled, but it doesn't seem to be amazing yet. I'm not in Mountain View or even USA though - so more than likely that's the problem.

> enable all your Search History

This is something I just can't bring myself to do. I disabled it years ago, along with all the other personalization options.

I don't mind giving them my location. I don't even mind them analyzing my mail. But I search for all kinds of crap, and I really really don't want anyone building a profile on me based on that.

The manual customization options in Google Now are sadly lacking. I've been able to add a few sports teams, but that's about it.

I suppose I could switch all my default searches to DuckDuckGo, then only use Google judiciously to deliberately train it. Hm, I think I will.

Its not just training, though... It will update you based on searches you make on an ongoing basis, often in very unexpected but nice ways. To make that work out, I think you really just need to be using Google search day to day.

this. I often will fire off a quick search for a restaurant I'm going to go to or am interested in going to, before I leave. Then the directions are on the google now card for me for the next hour or so, so if I feel like checking the restaurant out I click the card and I get directions.

It's amazing.

I too search all kinds of crap, and I don't mind anyone to build a profile on me based on that, if that's what I like. Some more crap in the future might be relevant for me, and I don't want to miss out!

What makes you think disabling search history is going to stop them?

Just train yourself to use Incognito Mode when you're looking for porn.

This in wonderful advice. More broadly, use one browser and account for the stuff you'd like to train Google on, and another (in incognito mode) for the stuff you'd prefer not to add to your profile.

Of course, they'll probably still know its you, but one imagines the algorithms will respect your preferences (as it would make the service worse if they didn't).

Eh, porn is the least of my concerns. Google's probably smart enough to filter that out when making decisions anyway, I assume.

Maybe I'm strange, but there's a fairly broad array of stuff I'd rather keep off the record. Anything that could possibly imply illegal activity, for example.

I've always been under the impression that they're building a profile on you, like it or not. All you're really choosing is whether or not you too will take advantage of it, or if Google is the sole benefactor of your activities.

I too had it off for a long time, but eventually enabled it. It's really nice to have Google Now automatically show directions to places you recently searched for in Maps.

I have a Galaxy Nexus and don't allow it to search history and still get a lot of info I consider useful. I think the only thing I allow it access to is email and location. Stuff like having a card for every package I get shipped or flight res saves me a lot of time. I've never seen outdated information on it.

I've had the Nexus 4 for about two weeks and it's surprised me a handful of times. You really have to use Google services to get full use out of it though. Like adding locations to events in Google Calendar (and, you know, using Google Calendar in the first place) to get the "you should probably get on the road now" messages.

Also things like birthday reminders seem to only work with your friends on Google+. None of my friends use Google+ and I only use it for specific groups. And I've yet to see a package tracking card, but it will be cool if they make improvements and stuff like that starts actually working. Things like that are small but on the day-to-day level would be pretty helpful.

Aside from that, the Nexus 4 is a nice device and refreshing change from iOS.

>And I've yet to see a package tracking card, but it will be cool if they make improvements and stuff like that starts actually working.

Odd. It usually pulls in tracking data within a few minutes of a ship confirmation hitting my inbox in Gmail. The only time I've seen it have trouble is with some USPS tracking numbers or if I place multiple orders from the same vendor in short succession (e.g., I place two Amazon orders a few minutes apart and Gmail thinks they're part of the same email thread).

Shipment tracking has actually been one of the most reliable (and convenient) features of Google Now for me.

This probably won't be seen since this thread is off the front page now, but the reason package cards (and all GMail based cards) don't work is because I'm using Google Apps.

http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/mobile/B-jW1pAZpdM/Pdm...

No real reason given. Just, "NOPE." Le sigh.

If you want to see how awesome it is, here's what you do. Purchase some tickets for a sporting event, and schedule a reservation for a restaurant afterwards. Make sure you purchase the tickets online and get the reservation through something like OpenTable so the confirmations get to your email.

Enjoy!

I do not use Google Now that much but I've got to say that I am surprised how well it predicts what I am going to do based on patterns.

First it knew all by itself where my home and where my workplace is (it named both correctly) and when I am leaving the house - then it suggested that I give that new place I am visiting more and more often a name. (my girlfriend) And then it knew before I knew it myself that I will go to my girlfriend on a monday because I've apparently been there the last 3 or 4 mondays. It's not that hard to see such a pattern if you are actively looking for it, but I wasn't really thinking that much about when I visit someone and if there is some kind of pattern.

I am pretty sure that such a tool can be amazingly predictive and helpful given enough time and data.

I don't always agree with Thurrott but I think he is spot on here.

Google Now is the killer app/feature for Android.

And from the 4 players in the mobile space right now, only Microsoft is really in a position to challenge something like Google Now.

And I don't hold out much hope that MS can get their act together to pull it off.

"But Windows Phone is entering a dangerous time, one in which its competitors are starting to catch up"

Pffft. Really? ROFL.

It's Paul Thurrott. He's like the mirror-universe version of John Gruber who only boosts Microsoft stuff instead of Apple.

Gruber once mentioned that he'd like to have Thurott on The Talk Show. I'd love to hear that.

There is one difference between them; With Thurrott, Microsoft is not always the best at everything. Rather, they are supposed to be but fail from time to time.

I haven't read Thurrott too often, but in the few times that I have, I've actually been somewhat relieved that he does maintain some degree of cynicism about how the company works. I am a former Microsoft employee and I get irritated about a lot of MS boosterism I see on the web in recent years; it's hard to read and more dogmatically pro-MS than most MS employees I know. But Thurrott doesn't strike me as one of those people. He knows where some of the bodies are buried and isn't shy to voice concerns.

You're quoting out of context.

He's speaking of a single category advantage in which WPh has an arguably better design... integrated services instead of silo'd apps.

He says this was their advantage and that (with their sloth-like dev pace) MS is in the process of squandering it, because competitors are adding those improvements, leaving WPh with none.

That competitors have other huge advantages to lean on is not included in this piece, but as a fan of TWIT, he is well aware of them.

You need to learn about android intents.

...or you about windows phone.

Android doesn't have "silo'ed apps." I don't see what Windows Phone has to do with it.

It does in the sense that they show one at a time. In WP functionality mostly integrates into the main interface. Of course android isn't standing still, which is the point of the article.

The submitted title is somewhat non-sensical. Google Now smartphone makes it sound like there is a company/team called Google Now building a smartphone.

I believe he forgot the word "app"

Not sure if you can call it an app if it is deeply integrated with the system.

Between Google Now, the anti fragmentation stuff in the SDK agreement and learning about the way Google share names/addresses with app developers I'm really thinking that Google are actually becoming Android's largest liability.

The problem is the GMail and Maps apps (as distinct from purely the webapps) are used as gateway drugs to casual information leakage, and Maps in particular becomes almost unusable unless you agree to let them slurp extra info from your vicinity.

Well, my three month old android phone says: Your device is not compatible with this version. I guess I'll check it out in one year and nine months when I get my next phone.

I actually have it running on my HP Touchpad running Ice Cream Sandwich. Isn't one of the benefits of Android that it's so open you can make it do just about anything? If I didn't want to hack my mobile device, I definitely would not have gotten invested in the Android platform. In my opinion, that ability is literally the only advantage it has over the competition. Without the hacker community supporting it, it's basically an iPhone with fewer apps.

What I'm saying is, you can either get Jelly Bean on your device via Cyanogenmod or you can get ICS and hack Google Now onto it with instructions found online.

I'm not rooting my phone. Not enough time to play with it. Need it to work when school calls and I have to go pick up my son.

I bought a Windows Phone because I wanted something that just works when it needs to work, and also is slick, modern, well-integrated, and protected by a walled-garden. I bought into the Android platform with a device that is not on contract and is not a phone, because I am willing to accept hacking around on and breaking a non-phone device.

Not that I'm denigrating your choice in any way, it has no bearing on my life at all, but I'm genuinely curious as to why anyone would buy an Android phone unless they're willing to hack it to bits. In my opinion, without root access on an Android phone, you're using an iPhone without great software support. The only draw of Android over the iPhone in the last three months that I can see is root access and a hacker community supporting it. Especially when it means buying an out-of-date and possibly out-of-support phone.

What drew you to the Android platform over the iPhone platform if you're not willing to update your software manually and are resigned to not getting a software upgrade until you buy a new phone? That seems ridiculous to me. Even on Windows Phone, every device that came with WP7 got WP7.5 and WP7.8.

I'm not interested in purchasing Apple products, for other reasons.

On android: my phone does "just work" and it's got a good camera, and plays youtube videos. I prefer hacking on the raspberrypi, personally.

As a user, I'm not sure I'm impressed. On my WP8 phone, I pin a live tile to the home screen exactly where I want it, at the size I want it, and it displays the information I expect to get from it. But Google Now sounds like a live tile knockoff that's constantly changing because it's guessing what I want to see based on personal information that I agree to share with it. I don't recall this approach ever working, and it practically guarantees that it will only have information I want a fraction of the time, so I'm unlikely to give it a prominent place on my home screen (or even use it if it affects battery life). If/when they start slipping in ads, it will be even less attractive.

But in the field of personal agents, it's definitely a significant milestone. At some point, we'll want to be able to ask what's on today's schedule when we wake up in the morning, or immediately check messages when we walk into our homes, or find out where a movie is playing and buy tickets when we hop into our self-driving cars that will take us right to the theater. Nobody's going to want to talk into a quaint little smartphone when all this becomes possible, but it's probably where personal agents start getting refined into a usable state.

>I don't recall this approach ever working

yes, failure in the past is definitely an indication that this concept will never work.

The linked article takes a very narrow view of google now, trying to shoehorn it into windows phone terms. It's way more than a live tile. It's a homescreen widget, a lockscreen widget, an app that is a scrollable list of cards, and it integrates with notifications. Essentially, it is predictive google search - instead of having to search for something, it provides you with the results you were about to search for.

The future that you talk about for personal assistants has already been surpassed by google now.

I think this over-estimates the number of people who are OK with opening their lives to Google to this degree. Amazing - possibly, invasive - you bet your porn collection.

It is disappointing unless you live in a large city. Even in areas of about 1 million it doesn't know the mass transit, etc. It ends up just displaying weather and being able to answer the age of Abraham Lincoln, but the latter could be found by Wiki in nearly the same amount of time.

It's cute. I've been using it for the past couple of weeks on a Nexus 4.

My opinion on it currently is that it looks promising but it's quite useless until there are finer controls on when and how cards appear (the controls there are now are really simplistic), and more importantly the ability to create my own cards, which would give me a reason to get back into SL4A.

As an example, the commute card that shows your distance from work/home is nice, but I have two jobs and commute home->work->work->home. I'm not sure I expect Now to figure that out quite yet, though it wouldn't be hard, but I do expect to be able to teach it that, which I can't currently do.

It would also be nice to be able to tell it "I'm going to my girlfriends house after work". In that situation, telling me there's a traffic jam on my route home isn't useful information at all.

I also would love the ability (if it exists, I haven't seen it) to have it use geocoded reminders, like "remind me to get milk when I'm near the grocery store".

I'm actually surprised that location-based reminders aren't already part of Google Now. It seems like a really natural feature given everything else it already does.

I'd have to imagine that's something in the works. It likes to give me transit information heading to work or home, and seems to be fairly smart about it since I don't work a normal 9-5 schedule.

This is kind of hacky but...

If you're willing to schedule a Google Calendar event for wherever you want to go - and give it a location... Now will actually figure that out for you. It will tell you when to leave to get to that event (and forgo telling you the commute time to home).

You should be able to get the first by setting an appointment in your google calendar. It certainly gives me a heads up for traffic when I set things in there for destinations it recognises.

Have you tried onx?

https://www.onx.ms

I have not heard of that. Looks interesting, thanks!

The commute card would actually be useful if only it would show public transit departures I can make, as it is now whenever I see the card it mostly shows subway trains that have already departed or a few that I can not possibly make it to in time.

Clicking the card only takes me to Google Maps where I get tons of irrelevant suggestions. Not helpful.

I do love the idea though. I'm hoping it will improve!

I've found that Now has started automatically showing me the distance to my frequently visited places. I suspect this is because I've navigated to their location a few times on Google Maps, so Google knows this is a location I care about.

I'm guessing you've already set your home and work location in Google Maps? You could then also search for your other work location, and Now should automatically start prioritizing it later, especially if you pull up that card often.

By the way, you probably know this, but you can change how often different cards show up, and when they show up in the settings. For example, I've set weather to only show up in the morning and evening, so it doesn't clutter up my cards.

I've set home and work yeah. And I also toned down how often weather shows up.

Haven't tried navigating though. I'll give that a shot.

I've a question - are these cards programmable? As in, can we create our own cards and push notifications etc to these?

Small anecdote: I live in Finland, and in the 2 months I've had Google Now on, it has given me any barely any info at all. How well can this be localized worldwide and how long will that take?

Hummm another app that will know where I go, what I eat, dress, with whom I speak, meet, have sex, what I read, what music I like, and where I am all the time, sweeet and free. A real killer app. I hope one day It can make choices for me, ow wait, It is already happening.

I apologize ahead of time for my childish humor but...I appreciate the time the screenshot was taken for the Google Now widget on the phone

I don't recall the origin of this, but it's also true of most Apple screenshots.

Very misleading title. The predictive power of this sounds really impressive, but utterly useless. I don't have alternative routes if there's traffic, and if there is, I already know what my options are, because I drive it every day. (coincidentaly this morning I was followed by one of google's white lexus self driving cars, with its silly spinny thing on top making it look like an attempt at being a TARDIS, although it was self-driving (it said so on the rear bumper), the driver was clearly driving it.)

I feel like Google Now will just take much of the fun out of life. If I want to see a movie, it's not exactly hard to look it up or walk down to the theater. Buying a ticket on Fandango is pointless, my movie theater has people selling tickets and completely unused machines right next to them. I also use the machine because there's never a line. I don't want to go into a restaurant and have google pick what I should order!

The only useful integration technology I have found useful recently was Passbook. I bought a United ticket on my smartphone which issued a Passbook boarding card when I checked in. I walked through SFO in about 15 minutes from curb to sitting on the plane, waving my iPhone at scanners along the way. Even when I changed my return flight the Passbook info changed dynamically with information and my boarding 'card'.

I am happy to pick my own restaurants, I enjoy looking on Yelp and making my own mind up. I don't want to go to the place that has paid google the most for ads, or who has hired the most fake reviewers. I have my own mind and I'm happy to use it.

Maps, Email, Search, all wonderful innovations from google, they have revolutionized these areas, but I still want to think for myself once in a while.

It's not that you don't think for yourself. You just move up the ladder a notch - now you are in symbiosis with Google and instead of doing the low level work you do the high level work. You can still enjoy life just as much in different ways.

The same kind of argument has been brought by people against cars, telephones and recordings. "I like to walk on my own feet, or ride a horse." "I like to speak to people face to face, not on that contraption." "I prefer to play the song on the piano, no need to use recordings!"

And especially agains Google Search & Wikipedia - many have voiced that we have become generalists and don't remember anything anymore, instead relying on Google to bring information to us all day long. Well, instead of learning dates and places and APIs by heart, we learn to efficiently search for them on Google. It's like meta-learning vs direct-learning, it's not worse, just one level up on the abstraction ladder.

symbiosis with Google - no thanks

I do prefer to walk, and I do prefer face to face. I am not against technology, in fact quite the opposite, I am just against useless technology like this.

I used it for a while, it's cute but my life is not that complicated. And I don't want to sell my digital soul to a company in exchange for "suggestions" and tips. That's me though.

I predict that in a year or two, Google's top engineer Patrick Pichette, will ruin this by stuffing it with ads. Ads everywhere.

The Windows Phone team had its hands full in the past couple of years with the Win CE to Win NT migration and porting the NT kernel to ARM.

While WP8 is still good, I am guessing/hoping that we'll see more user facing changes in the next version.

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