All posts tagged: Googles

Google’s new Universal Cart tracks prices on items you want now – plus 3 other tricks

Google’s new Universal Cart tracks prices on items you want now – plus 3 other tricks

Published by skeptic

October Prime Day kicked off the early holiday shopping season last week, and now Google is introducing new tools for online shoppers. Google’s latest tools use Google Search data and AI-powered item organization. Google’s new When to Buy Guide and Universal Cart may help alleviate the stressful holiday dilemmas we see year after year by advising you when certain items are discounted and saving your items from different retailers in one place, respectively. Also: Google lets you make personal Android apps for free now 1. Save products from multiple retailers Google’s Universal Cart lets you ditch open tabs and endless screenshots. The cart can save your progress across Google, so you’re never starting from scratch. Every time you save a product to your cart via AI Mode in Search or the Gemini app, it will be waiting for you when you return or decide to check out. 2. Keep tabs on pricing or inventory Google’s cart is built on the 60+ billion continually refreshed product listings via Google’s Shopping Graph. This means that you can get notifications about price …

Google’s Dreambeans finds stories on its own, and it’s the first AI app I want to keep

Google’s Dreambeans finds stories on its own, and it’s the first AI app I want to keep

Published by skeptic

I’ve spent years testing new apps, websites, and experiments powered by AI. Many of them are the result of solid ideas and middling execution, and it’s tricky to figure out how they fit into your daily life or productivity workflows. Take Gemini Omni or Nano Banana, for example — I don’t need AI to create photo and video slop. I’m admittedly biased, but I also don’t need Google AI Overviews to summarize the news. Often, when I click through to the original source, it says something completely different from the AI Overview’s summary. Google Labs has a new AI app called Dreambeans, and I’ve been using it for about a week. Google says this app provides “proactive, personalized collections of stories,” but what exactly does that mean? Based on my experience, Dreambeans doesn’t wait for you to search for a topic or for a news outlet to write about it. By combing through primary sources and learning your habits, Dreambeans presents you with stories that are genuinely insightful — and aren’t just a rip-off of …

Fitbit Edge is Google’s middle ground between Fitbit Air and Pixel Watch

Fitbit Edge is Google’s middle ground between Fitbit Air and Pixel Watch

Published by skeptic

Google’s Fitbit lineup expanded on Monday with the introduction of the Fitbit Edge, a new wearable that’s positioned between the Fitbit Air and Pixel Watch.  Priced at $179.99, it combines the Fitbit Air’s slim band with an OLED display for checking map directions, notifications, weather, and music controls.  Like the Pixel Watch and Fitbit Air, the Edge works with Google Health Coach, powered by Gemini. (You’ll need a Google Health Premium subscription to use it.) The coach can use your fitness, health, and medical information to put together weekly routines and workout plans, then adjust them around your schedule. It also comes with Google’s Health Guardian feature, which is designed to spot notable changes in health measurements over time, including indicators related to blood pressure and insulin resistance. (The company announced these features at the Pixel Watch 5 launch in August.) Image Credits:Google Google says the Fitbit Edge can automatically recognize and log up to 100 activities, including runs, bike rides, and walks. The company explains it uses context from your movement to work out …

Google’s new Fitbit Edge solves my biggest gripe with the Pixel Watch

Google’s new Fitbit Edge solves my biggest gripe with the Pixel Watch

Published by skeptic

ZDNET’s key takeaways Google just unveiled the $180 Fitbit Edge, a smart watch with a slim display. It’s a new product, but it resembles Google’s own Fitbit Charge, among other slim smart watches. Despite a price increase, not too much is different between the devices. The Pixel Watch 5, for all intents and purposes, is my ideal platonic smartwatch. Of all the exercise smartwatch apps I’ve used, Google Health is the most approachable for tracking sleep, stress, readiness, and exercise.  But the chunky watch was never my favorite to wear. At 12.3 mm, the bubbled display is too thick and round for my liking — thicker than the Galaxy Watch (8.6 mm) and Apple Watch Series (9.7 mm) lineup. I always felt like the bulbous device calls attention to itself with its big display and thick frame — not a smartwatch that disappears on the wrist, by any means.  Also: After one week wearing the Pixel Watch 5, here’s what I want most Google is seemingly addressing my concerns with the Fitbit Edge, its latest …

Gemini 4 Is Here: When You May Be Able to Use Google’s New AI Model

Gemini 4 Is Here: When You May Be Able to Use Google’s New AI Model

Published by skeptic

After months of delays, Google is gearing up to get back in the AI game. The company on Wednesday announced its newest frontier model, called Gemini 4 Argon. But you won’t be able to use it yet. Here’s why. A lot has changed in the 10 months since Google released Gemini 3 — and crushed its competition. One is the introduction of the White House’s voluntary review process for new AI models, with which Google said in a blog post it is “actively engaged.” Another is the increasingly potent cybersecurity risk that new AI models pose for online companies, governments and consumers. Just take a look at all the AI agent hacks we’ve seen this summer. Right now, Gemini 4 Argon is only available to specific cybersecurity defenders in Google’s Fairwind program. This has become the new way that AI companies roll out new frontier models: first to cybersecurity experts, who use it to shore up their own defenses and report any weaknesses, then to subscribers, and then eventually free users. OpenAI did this with …

Google’s AI Wants to Call Stores for You — Here Are the Problems With That

Google’s AI Wants to Call Stores for You — Here Are the Problems With That

Published by skeptic

Google on Thursday announced an expansion of its mobile Gemini AI capabilities, a new agentic feature built to handle everyday phone calls for you. Introverts of the world, rejoice — but also pay attention to the fine print, because there are limits to what Gemini can do for you. This technology, which starts with a “@Call for me” prompt when using Gemini on your phone, is slowly rolling out to eligible users. Gemini could call a store to verify business hours or ask about product availability. With the right prompt, it could call a local restaurant and make a reservation for a specific time. Or it could ask about pricing for a specific service, such as dry cleaning a suit. CNET Gemini’s new feature is intentionally limited when it’s time to close the deal. It’s designed not to make any payments or share a credit card number, though it can share your name and contact information. That means, for many tasks you may want Gemini to handle, you’ll have to follow along with a transcript …

Google’s Gemini Can Now Make Calls for You on Pixel Phones

Google’s Gemini Can Now Make Calls for You on Pixel Phones

Published by skeptic

Voice assistants handling phone calls is a little more accepted today than back in the Duplex days. Call screening features abound—whether on a Pixel, Samsung, or iPhone, onboard assistants routinely intercept unknown callers to ask why they’re calling. But these kinds of features—much like hyped-up AI translation features—can often fall short. Calls are unpredictable, and the person on the other end may hang up, assuming it’s just another spam call. What happens if Gemini doesn’t understand a person’s accent all that well? Will it trap the clerk in an endless loop of asking them to repeat themselves? And if the shop doesn’t have the tool you need, does the bot know how to bow out politely—or just cut the line? “That is exactly what we want to continue testing,” the Google spokesperson says. “With this experiment, we look forward to users testing a variety of cases, so that we can continue to improve the feature across accents and noisy environments.” And yes, Google says Gemini will “politely” hang up if the business can’t accommodate your …

I benchmarked Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 against Apple’s A20 Pro and Google’s Tensor G6, and one clearly loses

I benchmarked Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 against Apple’s A20 Pro and Google’s Tensor G6, and one clearly loses

Published by skeptic

Qualcomm’s new flagship chip is here — well, chips. The company announced the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 at Snapdragon Summit, but it also threw a curveball by revealing a higher-tier Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 mobile processor. Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 isn’t simply a successor to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 we saw last year, or the overclocked variant in Samsung and Redmagic phones. It’s something new entirely. But how much different is the “Extreme” chip from the “Elite” ones we’re used to? And do we actually need more power in our phones, when current processors already deliver more performance than we know what to do with? I ran a suite of benchmarks including Geekbench, 3DMark, and AnTuTu on a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 reference device — and the latest Apple, Samsung, and Google phones — to find out. About this article: Qualcomm provided travel and lodging for Snapdragon Summit. The company had no input in this article, and did not see it before publishing. …

YouTube Is Expanding Its AI Search to Be More Like Google’s

YouTube Is Expanding Its AI Search to Be More Like Google’s

Published by skeptic

Platforms like YouTube have used machine learning tech for years to build your social media feeds. Now, in the age of generative AI, YouTube is building on that technological foundation and introducing a new way to use AI to build custom video feeds, the company announced at Made on YouTube on Wednesday. You will soon be able to build multiple custom feeds of recommended videos by prompting YouTube like you would a chatbot, using plain language. So you can have feeds dedicated to specific subjects, like photography or college football, and YouTube creates dedicated tabs on your homepage for each feed. This will be rolling out across desktop, TV and mobile in the US next month. YouTube’s experimental Ask YouTube tool lets you search for videos with AI, and it’s expanding its capabilities. Now, if you search for information about a new product, like the new iPhone Duo, the Ask YouTube AI can compile information from videos and outside sources. It uses that information to build comparison tables, among other things. You can click on …

Google’s Gemini is the latest AI model to hack other companies

Google’s Gemini is the latest AI model to hack other companies

Published by skeptic

Google’s Gemini accessed the protected systems of three other companies in what The Wall Street Journal reports were the AI model’s first autonomous hacks. Similar to OpenAI’s breach of Hugging Face, the Gemini hacks were less noteworthy for being particularly sophisticated and more for the fact that they were conducted by an AI model. These breaches took place during cybersecurity testing by a company called Irregular. In one case, Gemini simply guessed passwords until it gained access; in the other two, it found credentials in a public repository. Irregular reportedly notified Google about the hacks in late July, but the companies did not confirm them publicly until Friday, after the WSJ reached out. Google said it hadn’t previously revealed the hacks because Gemini had “acted appropriately” by ending each breach as soon as it determined it had hacked a real company. However, Jack Cable, the CEO of AI security company Corridor, told the WSJ that Google was “trying to hide behind the norms that have been created for vulnerability disclosure,” rather than acknowledging that “models …