PedroDaGr8
06-15-2014, 10:16 PM
A very interesting and insanely indepth article that goes through the various iterations of andorid version by version. It is hard to believe that Android and iOS are only around 8 years old. Seeing how far Android comes in such a short time (iOS follows a similar trajectory) really drives home how quickly this technology became ubiquitous and how short our memories really are. We went from phones that were glorified dumbphones to true portable power computers.
One thing I found interesting is voice actions. Basically, the precursor to SIRI on iOS. Voice actions came out in August 2010, SIRI was released over a year later. This powerful but not well noted feature allowed you to vocally say Navigate to XXX or Send SMS to or Send email to in order to perform actions. Interestingly, its beginnings came about years earlier:
Voice recognition had been a project of Google’s for some time, and it all started with an 800 number. 1-800-GOOG-411 was a free phone information service that Google launched in April 2007. It worked just like 411 information services had for years—users could call the number and ask for a phone book lookup—but Google offered it for free. No humans were involved in the lookup process, the 411 service was powered by voice recognition and a text-to-speech engine. Voice Actions was only possible after three years of the public teaching Google how to hear.
Basically, this 411 project provided loads of real-world data to update and test their algorithms on. Once the algorithms were ready, they launched voice actions. Voice actions brillaince is that Googles servers do the CPU intensive (and battery draining) decoding, the device just packages and compresses the data for transmission.
@Big D - yep the G1 is in there. It still trips me out that YOU of all people (no offense) was a trend setter in technology. While others went gaga over the iPhone you said lets see what this lil android phone is all about.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40000-word-history-of-googles-mobile-os/
One thing I found interesting is voice actions. Basically, the precursor to SIRI on iOS. Voice actions came out in August 2010, SIRI was released over a year later. This powerful but not well noted feature allowed you to vocally say Navigate to XXX or Send SMS to or Send email to in order to perform actions. Interestingly, its beginnings came about years earlier:
Voice recognition had been a project of Google’s for some time, and it all started with an 800 number. 1-800-GOOG-411 was a free phone information service that Google launched in April 2007. It worked just like 411 information services had for years—users could call the number and ask for a phone book lookup—but Google offered it for free. No humans were involved in the lookup process, the 411 service was powered by voice recognition and a text-to-speech engine. Voice Actions was only possible after three years of the public teaching Google how to hear.
Basically, this 411 project provided loads of real-world data to update and test their algorithms on. Once the algorithms were ready, they launched voice actions. Voice actions brillaince is that Googles servers do the CPU intensive (and battery draining) decoding, the device just packages and compresses the data for transmission.
@Big D - yep the G1 is in there. It still trips me out that YOU of all people (no offense) was a trend setter in technology. While others went gaga over the iPhone you said lets see what this lil android phone is all about.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-android-a-40000-word-history-of-googles-mobile-os/