Showing posts with label Google's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google's. Show all posts

US looking to Google's Megan Smith to be chief tech officer?

Google X Vice President Megan Smith at Google's third-annual women techmakers panel. Seth Rosenblatt/CNET

Google's vice president of Google X, Megan Smith, is said to be one of the US government's top candidates for the chief technology officer position, according to Bloomberg.

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President Barack Obama's administration has been on the hunt for a new CTO and sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg that the shortlist includes Smith. If selected, she would replace Todd Park, who was the successor to Aneesh Chopra.

Smith, 49, has spent the last 11 years at Google in several different positions, including vice president of business development, head of Google.org, and co-host of Google's Solve for X forum. She's also been active in bringing more women and people of color into the tech world.

The CTO position would entail supervising how the US government uses technology, which includes tech job creation, expanding access to broadband for rural communities, and modernizing government records.

When contacted by CNET, Google declined to comment.

Tags: Tech Industry Google About the author

Google's self-driving cars will need steering wheels, at least for now

Google

Google has been hard at work at developing self-driving cars, but it now looks like the company will need to wait before software is truly in the driver's seat.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week issued new rules that say a driver must be capable of "immediate physical control" of a vehicle. So, the search giant's prototype cars for now will include steering wheels and a brake pedal system.

Google in May unveiled its own built-from-scratch car model -- a tiny two-seater with a front exterior that resembles a cartoon smiley face. But the vehicle was notably missing the physical controls for the driver, in favor of buttons that controlled the software.

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The company said it would comply with the state's regulations, which will go into effect in mid-September. "With these additions, our safety drivers can test the self-driving features, while having the ability to take control of the vehicle if necessary," a Google spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. The company did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.

Testing on public roads will begin next month, in prototypes that will include a steering wheel and pedals, the Journal said.

Google's self-driving car initiatives is just one of the company's more out-there projects, which Google likes to call "moon shots." Other projects coming from the company's experimental division, called Google X, include the head-mounted device Google Glass, and a project called Loon, which aims to bring Wi-Fi to unconnected regions via high-altitude balloons. The company has publicly been working on the cars since 2010.

When Google co-founder Sergey Brin unveiled the prototypes in May, he said the goal of the project is for self-driving cars to be "significantly" safer than human-driven cars in a few years. The cars only operate at speeds of 25 miles per hour, to be able to quickly maneuver obstacles. Brin said at the time that the vehicle hadn't crashed at all during testing.

According to the Journal, the California DMV also set other rules for driverless vehicles. Ron Medford, director of safety for Google's car project, asked the department about testing other types of vehicles, like motorcycles and trucks. The department declined, saying it wanted to first take "baby steps" with the technology.

Tags: Car Tech Google Self-driving cars About the author

This is what Instagram for Android would look like with Google's Material Design

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Google's "Material" redesign isn't expected until later this year, but it's already getting people excited. The new user interface style is supposed to be based around how physical objects move and is "grounded in tactile reality, inspired by our study of paper and ink." Google is already encouraging third-party developers to redesign their apps to fit with the new style, but some people just can't wait for that to happen. Designer Emmanuel Pacamalan has created a concept video showing Instagram rebuilt using Material Design principles, and the results are gorgeous.

Instagram has traditionally been very slow to add visual features, but did a big redesign for iOS 7, so it would make sense that we could see a new look for the upcoming...

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