Google can now tell you how busy a place is before you arrive

With Popular Times, Google introduced a nifty little feature for its search engine last year that lets you know how busy a restaurant, coffee shop or bar typically is at any given time of the week. Today, it’s taking this concept a step further by making this tool real-time. So now, you will know exactly how long the line is going to be before you even head out to your favorite brunch place on Sunday morning.

Like before, the Popular Times widget will appear when you look for a restaurant or bar in Google Search and Google Maps. It uses anonymized location data and searches to determine how busy a place currently is.

In my experience, the non-real time version was always pretty accurate, but it obviously doesn’t account for any special events that may change how many people crave Bloody Marys on any given Sunday. In case Google gets it wrong, though, you won’t get your time back but you can send it a correction.

Google already lets you know how long people lingered at a given place, so if you’re trying to figure out if you can still squeeze in a quick coffee before your next meeting, the combination of the new real-time data and this existing feature will hopefully get you there on time.

As far as I can see, the new real-time Popular Times feature isn’t live yet, but I would expect it to be available in the next few hours.

Google's request for map of Korea denied

Google's request for a detailed map of South Korea for Google Maps has been denied by the government.

The decision was made by a joint-committee led by the country's transport ministry and IT, foreign affairs, unification, defense, administration, and trade ministries. The committee cited "security concerns" as the reason behind the decision.

The final call comes after a delay from the initial August deadline for the US search giant's request in June. The postponement is speculated to have been caused by the US election, so as to wait for the election results and see the stance of President-elect Donald Trump before making a decision.

This is not the first time Google has requested access to more detailed maps from South Korea. The company has been requesting access to Korean maps that include navigation details and driving directions since 2010, which have been repeatedly refused.

South Korea, which is technically at war with North Korea since the armistice in 1953, has strict regulations over revealing map information.

Current law doesn't allow detailed maps to be housed in servers outside of the country. Google has created a server in South Korea to service the map of the country in a limited capacity.

Pre-Order $129 'Google Wifi' Router Replacement

Google is set to remove the wireless dead zones from the home with the launch of the Google Wifi router, a device that can now be pre-ordered. Expected to launch on December 6, the wireless router is being offered as a single US$129 device or in a US$299 bundle.

The latter comes in batch of three for use as a 'mesh' system around your home.

Wireless mesh technology, for the uninitiated, is a communications network in which compatible routers forward traffic to and from gateways; it basically allows users to build a unique home network out of multiple devices to ensure complete coverage. Eero, Luma, and Orbi have long provided similar solutions, but they come with a higher price tags.

Google Wifi replaces traditional routers, a home staple that often suffers from limited range, an aspect that Google calls 'points'. Two or more points seamlessly connect using mesh technology to create a blanket wireless network, capable of handling simultaneous streaming, downloading, and sharing.

A single Google Wifi point is enough for a small house or apartment (500 to 1,500sqft) and two will suffice for a medium home (1,500 to 3,000sqft). The three-pack can be linked together to cover residences up to 4,500sqft.

Keep in mind that a long, narrow home or particularly thick walls may require additional Google Wifi points.

Unveiled during an October hardware event alongside Google Home and Daydream VR, the new appliance boasts smart features similar to the wireless Google OnHub router, released last year.

Designed with internal antennas and 'subtle, useful lighting', the trash can-like Google OnHub searches the airwaves and selects the best channel for the fastest connection. With it, owners can tap into the power of Google Wifi to expand that coverage.

According to Google's support page, the Google Wifi device works with almost all US Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and is compatible with almost all modems, but there are no details as to specific incompatibilities yet. It cannot, however, be used as an extender for a traditional router. If you have a combined modem and router, it's usually possible to disable the router functionality and replace it with Google Wifi.

Google to Sell Project Ara Modular Smartphone in Puerto Rico

Eager to check out Google's Ara modular smartphone? If you live in Puerto Rico, you're in luck. At its second Project Ara Developers Conference on Wednesday, Google announced plans to begin selling the customizable smartphone in Puerto Rico as part of a pilot program later this year. The Web giant also unveiled Spiral 2, the latest Ara prototype, which can make 3G phone calls, according to a report from Mashable.

Project Ara is Google's moonshot effort to create a modular smartphone with the goal of "delivering mobile Internet to the next 5 billion people." The idea is that you'll get a so-called "endoskeleton" — the phone's structural frame — and then be able to snap in different "modules" for added functionality and features.

The modules can be easily inserted and removed at any time, even when the device is on, and have replaceable covers or "shells," which you can also customize with photos or images you like.

In a new YouTube video Wednesday, Google's Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group, which is developing the phone, showed how you can easily pop different modules on and off the device — things like cameras, speakers, chips, even a new screen if your old one cracks. Project Ara leader Paul Eremenko said Google has 11 prototype modules, but the goal is to have 20 to 30 by the time it goes on sale, Mashable reported.

An even more advanced version of the device — dubbed Spiral 3 — is expected later this year with features like 4G LTE and better antennas. When it goes on sale in Puerto Rico later this year, Ara will be available through two local carriers — OpenMobile and Claro — and the cost will vary depending on which modules you choose. A global launch is expected to follow, but there's no word yet on timing.

For a close look at Ara, check out the video below

Hands On With the Google Nexus Player

Google's Nexus Player is the company's best stab at the TV so far. I got a demo of it today at a Google event, and I'm hopeful. Hopefully, we'll see Android TV introduced into sets at CES.

The Nexus Player is a little disc, made by Asus and running an Intel Silvermont processor, which plugs into your TV. It comes with a small black remote (simple, not complex like some of the silly Google TV remotes were), and it has an optional gamepad. Its only ports are an HDMI-out, a power port, and a USB jack; I didn't see Ethernet, for instance.

Plug it into your TV, and you see a "smart TV" interface centered on content from Google Play, which takes top billing. What's really interesting is what's going on down below, though. According to Google, the Nexus Player is "just an Android device" and will run "any app downloaded from Google Play."

I can't wait to see how that plays out. Games, for instance, are restricted by their interfaces. If you want to play games, you'll probably want a Bluetooth gamepad like Asus's $39 unit, and you'll want to play gamepad-compatible games. Fortunately, there are a lot of those nowadays. You can also use a paired Android phone as an input device.


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The hotter question is whether all the Google Play entertainment apps will let themselves be run on the Nexus Player. Our demo sample showed Netflix, Pandora, Hulu and, of course, YouTube. So far, so good. But what about HBO GO? And Amazon, which has structured its Prime streaming app so it plays on Android phones but not tablets? Whether you'll really be able to play any content that Android suppors, or whether content owners will block this device, is a critically unanswered question.

The Nexus Player also does everything a Chromecast does, showing content from other Android devices in the home.

Like with Amazon's Fire TV , Google has also invested in voice search being a major way to search the company's content library. A search for "Halloween movies," spoken into the remote, turned up the whole horror movie series on Google Play and a lot of more family-friendly content on YouTube.

The Nexus Player costs $99 and enters a crowded field full of Amazon Fire TVs, Chromecasts, Rokus and such. They all suffer from the "Input 1 problem," which is that most ordinary consumers don't want to have to switch inputs away from their cable box or console gaming system for their content.

But the Nexus Player's real value is as a harbinger of Android TV. Sony, Sharp, and Philips have all said they'll bring Android TVs to market soon, probably at CES. The smart TV market is still a mess of competing, complex, proprietary interfaces, which has slowed the development of TV-compatible apps in general. Google's going to make a bid here, once again, to standardize and simplify.

For more, see PCMag's hands on with the Nexus 6 smartphone and Nexus 9 tablet (video below).

Google Expands Neural Networks for Language Translation

More than 35% of the requests that Google Translate process will now be handled via advanced neural networks, boosting the 10-year-old tool's ability to offer translations that aren't embarrassingly wrong.

The technology, which translates whole sentences at a time, rather than reading phrase by phrase, first debuted for translations between Chinese and English in September 2016. It will roll-out to Spanish, French, German, and a handful of other languages starting today, according to what Google Product Lead, Barak Turovsky, announced at a press event in San Francisco.

Expanding the use of neural networks allows Google Translate to base translations on a sentence's context. For example, the tool currently translates an original German quote from Albert Einstein as: "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that they have arisen." With neural machine translation, the final result will instead be: "Problems can never be solved with the same way of thinking that caused them."
Based on unannounced Beta Testing for Turkish translations earlier this week, Turovsky shared how users immediately recognised the improvement. "People just notice the difference," he said, noting an overwhelmingly positive response on Twitter.
When Google Translate launched a decade ago, its phrase-based algorithms simply looked up individual words, replaced them with the equivalent word in another language, and pieced them together. That often resulted in incoherent sentences. It later added the ability for users to suggest translation improvements, a feature Turovsky said won't be going away as Google transitions to neural networks.

The company will also expand neural machine translation to its cloud API, a paid service that third-party developers can use to integrate translation into their websites and apps.

Amaysim announces NBN strategy and timing

Amaysim plans to extend its dual-brand strategy from mobile into its offering as a National Broadband Network (NBN) retail service provider, saying it will hold closed trials of its broadband service over the next month ahead of a commercial launch at the beginning of 2017.

Speaking at Amaysim's annual general meeting, CEO Julian Ogrin said the company's acquisition of Australian Broadband Services (AusBBS) is progressing well, allowing it to take advantage of what he called the "once-in-a-generation forced churn event" that is the NBN.

"Expanding further into Australian households is a key priority for us, and our move into broadband provides the company with an opportunity to address a new consumer segment and capture a greater share of household wallet," Ogrin said on Friday morning.

"Progress is on track to combine the strengths of the AusBBS technology stack with our go-to-market strategy, digital marketing expertise, and subscriber experience overlay. We expect to launch closed trials of the Amaysim broadband offering before Christmas, with a market launch early in the new calendar year."

Ogrin outlined Amaysim's two-part strategy for broadband: Cross-selling broadband to its "highly engaged" mobile customer base; and using its "data-driven digital marketing expertise to tactically target the broader market".

Most importantly, Ogrin said, Amaysim will extend to fixed-line broadband its dual-brand strategy that has been a cornerstone of its business since its AU$70 million acquisition of Vaya in January.

"We will differentiate our product offering through a dual-brand positioning, value, quality of service, subscriber empowerment, and simplicity," Ogrin explained.

"Our experience in mobile disruption will hold us in good stead when it comes to creating high-value, yet simple to understand, products that will resonate with Australians."

Ogrin in August told ZDNet in an interview that the timing for entering the NBN market is "perfect".

"When we launch, we will launch ADSL and NBN, but naturally, we will want to capture the benefits of the migration to NBN and the switching opportunity that's going to exist," Ogrin told ZDNet.

"How we're going to do it -- we always said we want to bring the Amaysim philosophy into fixed broadband. We're a technology leader, our success is built on our technology platform. We provide an online disruptor experience not unlike Netflix, not unlike Spotify or Uber, and for us it's download the app, we're the telco in your pocket, and we want to drive that experience into fixed broadband as well."

The chief executive added that Amaysim plans to assist customers during their broadband switchover, including in completing tasks like finding electricians.

"It's not just about being online, but it's just about addressing the pain point of the needs of the customer," he told ZDNet.

Amaysim completed its AU$4 million acquisition of AusBBS in August.

A report earlier this week by market research company Kantar revealed that Amaysim's total mobile market share rose by 0.3 percentage points over the year to June 30, up to 4.9 percent of the market.

Across the prepaid sector, it rose by 0.2 percentage points to hold 6.1 percent of the market; in post-paid, it grew by 0.2 percentage points up to 2.1 percent of the market; and in no contract, it decreased by 0.4 percentage points down to 12.4 percent.

Earlier this month, Amaysim announced that it now holds almost 30 percent of the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) market in Australia thanks to its acquisition of Vaya, with the group now counting over 1 million customers.

Amaysim reported a full-year net profit of AU$12.31 million for 2015-16 on revenue of AU$253.5 million and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) of AU$25.1 million.

Profit was down 48.7 percent from the AU$24 million reported a year ago due to its acquisitions of Vaya and AusBBS, while EBITDA was up by 79.3 percent and revenue increased by 19.3 percent.

Google Play Music Serves Up Tunes with Machine Learning

Google Play Music is getting a make-over. Music lovers can now tap into 'richer' recommendations along with a fresh user interface and offline playlists. Using machine learning, Play Music can create unique experiences based on individual listeners' taste, location, and activity.

Even the current weather is taken into account.

"We'll deliver personalized music based on where you are and why you're listening," Google Play Music Product Manager, Elias Roman, wrote in a blogpost.

"Relaxing at home, powering through at work, commuting, flying, exploring new cities, heading out on the town, and everything in between," he said. "Your workout music is front and center as you walk into the gym, a sunset soundtracks appears just as the sky goes pink, and tunes for focusing turn up at the library."

Meanwhile, subscribers will also have access to music, even when there's no service. "As long as you remember to charge your smartphone, you'll have your favorite tunes, even if you forgot to download them ahead of time," Roman wrote.

Users will also notice a new look: the revamped Google Play Music homescreen features favorite playlists, latest releases, and more tunes from popular artists—at the right time and place for you.

The new experience is rolling out now to Google Android, Apple iOS, and Web subscribers in 62 countries. If you're not already enrolled, try free unlimited access for 30 days; individual plans are US$9.99 per month, while up to six people can share a family plan for US$14.99 per month.

Google in July 2014 acquired streaming music service Songza, whose proprietary algorithms prompt users to play music for a specific time of day, activity, or mood. Co-founded by Roman nearly a decade ago, the Internet radio program officially shuttered in January as the company merged into Google Music.

Android Lollipop Benchmarked: Faster Than 4.4

Call it the state of the ART. With two Google Nexus 5 phones at PCMag, we were finally able to benchmark an Android 4.4 device with the older Dalvik runtime against Android 5.0 Lollipop's new ART runtime, and we found a bit of a difference.

Android 4.4 introduced ART, but it was hidden behind a panel of developer settings. Lollipop makes it mandatory. As Jason Snell (not that Jason Snell) recounts at New Relic, the ART runtime compiles applications when they're installed, as opposed to on each run. That makes execution dramatically faster. Snell found application performance sometimes tripled. We didn't find results that dramatic on our various benchmark tests, but we did see a bit of a performance boost:

Google has done a good job of filtering Material Design and new features down to Android 4.4; the new calendar, maps, and Chrome 39 are all available to earlier versions of Android. So browser improvements in Chrome 39, as you can see from the Browsermark score above, carry over to both 4.4 and 5.0 devices.

RAM, graphics, and database I/O scores all stayed almost exactly the same from Android 4.4 to Android 5.0. But apps will probably launch more quickly and run more smoothly because of that boosted compilation speed.

This all comes at a cost, though. Adobe confirmed that its Air software isn't yet compatible with Android 5.0, affecting a slew of third-party apps built with Air. The site AndroidPit has a list of other current Lollipop bugs.

We still think Lollipop is a huge step forward for Android users, and you should look forward to when it arrives on your device. Read our full review for more details.

Google Cast: Stream Audio to Your Speakers, Dongle-Free

You know all the cool shenanigans you can get up to with Chromecast, and now Google wants to extend this streaming functionality beyond the dongle. The company today unveiled its "Google Cast" technology, which will allow users to send audio streams directly from the cloud to their speaker.

You can use your device to cast an audio signal to any speaker fitted with Google Cast. Like Chromecast, the stream isn't transmitted from your device—rather, it comes directly from your local Wi-Fi network. Your device, in effect, is only the remote control. Unlike Chromecast, Google Cast doesn't function via a dongle or extra piece of hardware—it will come inside speakers from partner manufactures such as Denon, Sony, and LG. Google promises cast-ready speakers from these manufacturers and others will be available "later in 2015."

Users can interface with Google Cast via their mobile device (both Android and iOS) or the Chrome browser on their computer. Google has already announced partnerships with content providers such as NPR, Pandora, iHeart radio, Rdio, TuneIn, and BeyondPod.

As you might have already imagined, you will also be able to stream content on Google Cast from Google-owned properties such as Songza, Google Play Music, and possibly more. The company didn't say explicitly, but if you watch the promotional video for Google Cast (below), it appears that you will also be able to cast just the audio section of a YouTube clip.

The company promises that Google Cast speakers will "join a growing Google Cast ecosystem, which includes more Android TVs, game consoles, and set-top boxes."