Bits Blog: New Apps Arrive on Google Glass

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press Google hopes that apps will make Glass, the company’s Internet-connected glasses, more functional.

Google Glass, the company’s Internet-connected glasses, will soon have seven new apps, including breaking news alerts from CNN, fashion features from Elle, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook posts and reminder notes from Evernote.

Google announced the apps, which it calls Glassware, Thursday at its I/O developers conference, the largest assembly yet of people wearing Glass in the same place. They join Path and The New York Times as the only apps so far available on Glass. The glasses also offer Google services like search and maps, connect to users’ cellphones for text messaging, take photos and record video.

Just as apps transformed smartphones from cellphones into devices that have become essential to daily life for many people, so Google hopes that apps will make Glass more functional. Still, Google is moving slowly and cautiously in opening Glass to developers. Apps have limited access to Glass users’ data, for instance, and for now, cannot include ads.

Google wants developers to experiment with building apps tailored to Glass, as opposed to just transporting mobile apps to the new device. Glass is different than phones because it is in a user’s line of sight and has a smaller screen. So notifications, for instance, could easily be disruptive or unwanted.

Google has given Glassware developers four pieces of advice: keep it short and sweet for the small screen, make sure alerts are relevant, send timely information people need on the go and make tasks easier and more seamless than they are on other devices.

CNN’s app, for instance, lets people choose which types of news alerts they receive (politics but no sports, for instance), and the time of day at which they are delivered. Then they can read or hear aloud a short summary and watch a video clip.

Google A screenshot from the Elle app for Google Glass.

Similarly, Elle’s app allows people to choose the sections of the magazine they want to see on Glass, swipe through photos from a story, hear a section of a story read aloud, add stories to a reading list for later and share stories with friends. At Elle, there is a team dedicated to taking monthly magazine content and turning it into real-time updates that make sense for Glass, like posts from the Elle Dispatch blog.

Google A screenshot from the Twitter app for Google Glass.

So far on Glass, photos are shareable only through Google Plus. With the Facebook app, Glass users will be able to share photos taken with Glass on Facebook. Twitter’s Glass app lets people tailor their stream to only receive posts from certain people and transcribe new posts using voice. Tumblr’s app shows a user’s full feed or just select updates.

When people are using Evernote on the Web, they will be able to send notes, like a grocery list, to Glass, so it’s accessible when they need it.

Another new app was built by three of the developers who received an early edition of Glass. It’s a game called Ice Breaker that some people could say bridges the divide between the physical and digital worlds — and others might say creates some socially awkward situations. Glass users see a notification of someone who is also playing the game nearby, and the people introduce themselves and take a picture of one another, rate their conversation and earn points.

The Glassware will be available to people who signed up and paid $1,500 for an early edition of Glass. Though other developers are beginning to build apps for the device, there is not yet an app store where anyone can offer such apps.

Coverage of the annual Google I/O conference for developers, May 15-16, 2013.

E-Book Price War Has Yet to Arrive

Last spring, the Justice Department sued five major publishers and Apple on e-book price-fixing charges. The case was a major victory for Amazon, and afterward there were widespread expectations — fueled by Amazon — that the price of e-books would plunge.

The most extreme outcome went like this: Digital versions of big books selling for $9.99 or less would give Amazon complete domination over the e-book market. As sales zoomed upward, even greater numbers of consumers would abandon physical books. The major publishers and traditional bookstores were contemplating a future that would pass them by.

But doomsday has not arrived, at least not yet. As four of the publishers have entered into settlements with regulators and revised the way they sell e-books, prices have selectively fallen but not as broadly or drastically as anticipated.

The $10 floor that publishers fought so hard to maintain for popular new novels is largely intact. Amazon, for instance, is selling Michael Connelly’s new mystery, “The Black Box,” for $12.74. New best sellers by David Baldacci and James Patterson cost just over $11.

One big reason for the lack of fireworks is that the triumph of e-books over their physical brethren is not happening quite as fast as forecast.

“The e-book market isn’t growing at the caffeinated level it was,” said Michael Norris, a Simba Information analyst who follows the publishing industry. “Even retailers like Amazon have to be wondering, how far can we go — or should we go — to make our prices lower than the other guys if it’s not helping us with market share?”

Adult e-book sales through August were up 34 percent from 2011, an impressive rate of growth if you forget that sales have doubled every year for the last four years. And there have been more recent signs of a market pausing for breath.

Macmillan, the only publisher that has not settled with the Justice Department, said last week as part of a statement from John Sargent, its chief executive, that “our e-book business has been softer of late, particularly for the last few weeks, even as the number of reading devices continues to grow.” His laconic conclusion: “Interesting.”

Mr. Norris said Simba, which regularly surveys e-book buyers, has been noticing what it calls “commitment to content” issues.

“A lot of these e-book consumers aren’t behaving like lab rats at a feeder bar,” the analyst said. “We have found that at any given time about a third of e-book users haven’t bought a single title in the last 12 months. I have a feeling it is the digital equivalent of the ‘overloaded night stand’ effect; someone isn’t going to buy any more books until they make a dent in reading the ones they have already acquired.”

Another, more counterintuitive possibility is that the 2011 demise of Borders, the second-biggest chain, dealt a surprising blow to the e-book industry. Readers could no longer see what they wanted to go home and order. “The print industry has been aiding and assisting the e-book industry since the beginning,” Mr. Norris said.

It is possible that Amazon, which controls about 60 percent of the e-book market, is merely holding back with price cuts for the right moment.

The next few weeks are when e-book sales traditionally take a big jump, as all those newly received devices are loaded up with content.

Amazon declined to comment beyond saying, “We have lowered prices for customers from the prices publishers set on a broad assortment of Kindle books.” Barnes & Noble declined to comment on its pricing strategy.

The question of the proper price for e-books has shadowed the industry ever since Amazon introduced the Kindle in late 2007 and created the first truly popular portable reading device. Amazon had a natural impulse to build a market and was an aggressive retailer in any case, so it took best sellers that cost $25 in independent bookstores and sold them for $9.99 as e-books. Consumers liked that. E-book adoption soared.

Madden NFL 13 Will Arrive At Wii U Launch

EA has confirmed Madden NFL 13 will be a Wii U launch title. However, the impact of new hardware is evident, as not all key features of Madden 13 will make it to Wii U.

First and foremost, Nintendo's version of Madden 13 will not feature the revamped Infinity Engine, which revamps the franchise's physics in a major way. Our own Greg Miller noted this overhaul changed the feel of the game, making each play feel more like "a fight" than before. In an interview with ESPN, producer Yuri Bialoskursky said "It’s not for a lack of want. We definitely wanted to get the physics into the game. The Infinity Engine is something that is a point of interest for “Madden” fans, it’s just something we weren’t able to achieve for this first year on the new hardware. A lot of times, new hardware comes with new challenges."

EA is bringing many of the key Madden 13 features to Wii U, which is being developed by a dedicated team. Ideas like Total Control Passing, Girdiron Club and the new commentators are on the way. Plus the integration with Wii U's GamePad will allow players to make faster play calls, substitute players and create custom hot routes on the fly, changing the way sports fans will interact with a Madden game. Another key feature being brought to Wii U is Connected Careers, which allows up to 32 players to form a league. Bialoskursky noted that online is a big emphasis for Nintendo this time around, aligning with EA's own interests for its sports titles. On the downside, however, the Madden Ultimate Team feature will not be present this time around.

Speaking with IGN, Bialoskursky said his team's key focus this time around was making sure Wii U owners would have an authentic HD experience. That a game coming at a system's launch doesn't quite execute at the same level as its counterparts on systems that are now six and seven years old is almost par for the course, though it doesn't mean that EA isn't trying to give Nintendo owners as much as possible.

Grandchildren Arrive. A Medusa’s Head of Wires Soon Follows.

I am hardly a computer novice. As a sportswriter for The New York Times, I had the distinction of sending in the paper’s very first article by computer, back in 1974.

But now I get bamboozled and frazzled by my grandchildren when they visit: Invariably, they have messed up my computer, my iPad, my iPhone and my iPod.

Just a few weeks ago, 15-year-old Corey asked to use my cellphone. Perhaps I should have asked where his was (lost, once again, I later found out). After he left, I was surprised that I wasn’t receiving calls on it. Well, yes I was. Somehow he had turned off the volume.

I got that settled — all I had to do was push one tiny button. But then I began getting texts from what I discerned to be teenage girls, looking for that heartthrob Corey — and followed them up with Facebook postings.

Of course, we want the grandchildren to visit. In fact, we want them desperately, since two of them live in London and two of them live in Florida. But within hours of their arrival, the apartment looks like a Medusa’s head of wires. They use so many outlets that I have to move the couch in the den so we can reach the one hidden behind it. Then I wind up with songs on my iPod by people named Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, vying with Frank Sinatra and Eddie Fisher.

Of course, I’m guilty of some egregious computer mischief myself — I sailed into unfamiliar waters when I wanted to learn more about a young woman my son Mike was dating. So I Facebooked her — and then discovered I had inadvertently plastered her name all over the ether. I had misused an item called “status update,” and so whenever anyone looked me up, her name was joined with mine. That brought intense laughter from a grandson and a “You did what?” from my son.

I spent the next hour chasing my name and her name all over the place, trying to untangle them, until I had erased my incriminating search. I was sure I’d be tabbed an online stalker.

But no, I’m just a grandpa happy to be able to press a “send” button without creating a family incident. Since my grandchildren haven’t been here for a few weeks, I’m going to take a chance this works. Here goes.