Review

Google's Play Store has more than 2 million apps users can pick from.

With that many to search and choose, discovery is a major challenge for users. And that is a concern to both Google and also app developers.

While searching for famous and popular app won't be that difficult, many others will stay down below the surface. Here is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes to work. By having neural network to aid the human touch, Google can figure out better which apps belong in which categories.

According to Google's AI researchers on November 8th, 2016:

AI with the technology called neural network, works by loosely mimicking how the human brains work. On the Play Store, Google processes the app names and their description, to then try to figure out which ones to show in the search result.

This is because AI can be designed to do a better job in sorting apps according to categories, especially when there are many of them to choose from. With the attempt, Google is focusing to balance new apps with popular standbys, take out malicious apps, and help developer to get their own apps to show up high in search results.

In order to make this happen, Google trains the system by creating very rough approximation of language-centric learning. The team trained the neural network to learn how language was used to describe apps. By using a Skip-gram model, the team can make the neural network predict the words around a given word. After that, the neural network encodes its knowledge as embeddings where they can be then used to train another model called classifiers to distinguish which topics apply to which apps.

While the architecture produced good results, it would sometimes overgeneralized. As the team explained, it might associate Facebook with "dating" or "educational games."

To produce more precise classifiers, the team needed a lot more data to train the system. Here is where humans take their role. The data that is funneled can be evaluated by human raters to get the classifier output, to then feed it back again to the system. The process allowed the team to bootstrap the existing system, giving them a way to improve classifier performance.

And because the AI solutions learn more about users' habits and preferences and make better recommendations than they currently do, Google allows people to assess how well the categorization worked and thus steer it toward even better results.

Redesigned Play Store

Besides putting AI into a good use by helping how the Play Store works, Google is also making some visual changes to the Play Store. So here changes behind the scene follows minor redesigns at the front.

The changes aren't drastic and are more cosmetics than an overhaul. The focus here is to make Play Store less cluttered.

At first, the green background has been given a darker shade, and each app's page has been given a larger install button and the app ratings are also made a lot more distinguishable. This should make call-to-action more prominent, putting engagement first before information.

Additional changes include the removal of the box which listed the appropriate age category for the app. Badge is also removed.

The new UI still shows the average stars received by the app by users, along with an approximate number of downloads. While these stats are no longer posted inside a badge, they remain displayed under the larger install button. Other changes include larger screenshots of the app, and a new position for the "Read More" link that expands the description of the app.

App carousel on the main Play Store page has been made a bit smaller, and the "More Information" page that was previously located at app description has been relocated above the developer's information.

The new UI was first spotted on Nexus devices running Android 7.1.1. At the moment, Google seems to be settled with the Play Store's current design. Adopting Material Design with colorful visuals, the minor adjustments are more based on user testing than its own willingness.

In addition to the above, Google also wants to expand Play Store's support to more payment methods, introducing numerous new tools aimed to help developers monetize their creations and expansion to Daydream, Android Wear 2.0, and more Chromebooks.

With all the above, Google is planning to help developers to cope with increased competition by expanding the Play Store ecosystem as a whole.

Google and Apple have different taste in design. While Apple opts for "dull" but useful design interactions, the former likes splashy colors and attractive visual cues.

To push more of its design language forward into Apple, Google revamps its Gmail in what it calls "the biggest overhaul of the app in nearly four years."

"When you get the next Gmail iOS app update, you’ll notice some exciting changes," said Google on its November 7th, 2016 blog post.

The first up is the new looks. Gmail for iOS now looks a lot more like its Android counterpart: Material Design with a red-colored bar up on its display. By having more of its Material Design-oriented products running on Apple, Google is further pushing its brand influence to the faithful competitor.

While most of the changes are just plain aesthetic, Google also introduces some new features.

And as for the new features, the first is the Undo Send. This feature should come in handy when users realized that they've made a mistake soon after sending an email. Almost immediately to a few seconds after sending a message, users can tap "Undo" at the bottom of the screen. With this, users can prevent embarrassing moments when sending wrong emails to the wrong person.

In the meantime, Gmail for Android has yet to have this feature while Google' own Inbox app already does.

The next is the speed. Google said that it sped up its search with 'instant' results, and also provides suggestion while the user type. And for last, users can also swipe to the side to see archive and deleted emails.

According to Google, these can make the overall user interactions with the app a lot faster.

And not just Gmail. Google also makes a few update to its Calendar app based on users' feedback.

1. Users can now see month and week view in landscape mode.
2. The ability to set up alternate calendars (non-Gregorian calendars - like Lunar, Islamic or Hindu).
3. Users can now search for things like events, reminders and goals, straight within Apple' Spotlight Search.

YouTube is still renowned for being the platform behind many videos on the web. In order to bring better experience for its users, the video-sharing platform has brought features including supports for various formats: from HD to 4K videos, 3D and 360-videos as well as spatial audio.

In November 7th, 2016, YouTube announces a support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) videos. The format enables supported devices to showoff more vivid and eye-catching visuals.

By supporting HDR videos, YouTube is having a major quality update. HDR isn't about resolution (users won't see the differences seen from 1080p to 4K resolution, for example). But it enables videos to take a better advantage of the given resolution to show better pronounced visuals.

HDR videos have a higher contrast for more detailed colors and better clarity. Supporting a wider color gamut, HDR videos can be more vibrant.

Simply put, according to YouTube, "HDR unlocks the most spectacular image quality we've ever streamed."

As a start, YouTube is working with creators like MysteryGuitarMan, Jacob + Katie Schwarz, and Abandon Visuals to bring contents in HDR. And starting at the moment of announcement, video creators can upload HDR videos to YouTube.

And to make things easier for users, YouTube has also worked with the DaVinci Resolve team to make uploading HDR videos as simple as SDR.

The above picture is an example of SDR and the picture below is HDR. We can see the contrast difference as well as brightness. HDR can display a more eye-catching colors with better clarity. This is because HDR videos allow a greater range of colors between the brightest parts and the darkest parts.

HDR videos are similar to HDR photos. The difference between the two is that HDR videos require HDR panel to display the full range of tones. The panel also needs to be set bright enough in order for users to see the difference.

Starting at the day of the announcement, users can watch YouTube videos in HDR format on supported devices. Using Google's Chromecast Ultra, HDR TVs, SUHD or UHD TVs, for example. If users don't have the supported devices, videos will still play, but in its dynamic range.

While HDR has potentials, the moment sees a problem: high-resolution TVs like those that support 4K aren't yet in everyone's home (let alone those with HDR). There also aren't that many computers with proper HDR support yet, and the only phone with official HDR implementation was the Galaxy Note 7.

Having support for HDR means that YouTube is just getting ready for the future. So when the future it predicts to happen, happens, it's ready to embrace it.

Other platforms such as Netflix and Amazon also support HDR, but they generally covers their own exclusive contents. YouTube on the other hand, is bringing the support for a wider audience. So it's putting itself much ahead of the competition, although there won't be that many people using it at the moment of release.

But as more HDR devices become available, YouTube wants to partner with more vendors to enable streaming of HDR videos on more devices.

Material Design is a design language created by Google. It has been the design foundations of many Google products, as well as third-party apps as well as websites.

According to Google, "Material is a metaphor, a system for uniting style, branding, interaction, and motion under a consistent set of principles. With Material we believe product teams can realize their greatest design potential."

With its popularity rising, Google is still expecting more people to use Material Design. As a strategy, it releases a new set of designing tools. This is partially its way to expand its design language by making it friendlier and easier to implement

Material Design was introduced in 2014 alongside Android Lollipop. Initially, it was meant to make people rethink how software should be designed on touchscreens. But now, Google wants the design to be a unified system that combines theory, resources, and tools for crafting digital experiences.

So it's much more about interaction than how it looks.

Previously, the search giant has released several tools to help designers and developers to build products using it, now the company wants more than that.

Design As A Continuous Effort

Design is not just something to please the eyes. It's also about interactions and how can something be represented in a way that appeals in user-experience. Because design is an art of continuous problem solving, Google kept investigating and validating needs by crafting and developing new ideas to create new solutions.

As a "metaphor" to rationalize design and implementation, Material design is a shared language to help designers and developers to create a style, brand, interaction and motion under a cohesive set or principles.

And because the new suite of tools are open-source projects, Google is expecting their expansions to be fast.

Gallery

Gallery is where users can organize their design workflow in one place. This way, everyone in a team can have a clear view and keep up with any progress and process. Here, team members can give feedback on everything.

The set of tools work similarly like a GitHub for designers. It makes things easier for people to upload, share, and comment on designs. With version control, users can also add different interactions. And because it also has a presentation layer, users can give out simple web links when they want to share the design to others.

Stage

Stage is brought forward by the teams behind Pixate and Form. Stage changes the way designers and developers build interactive experiences. It enables a more dynamic intentional and systematic workflow for crafting digital experience, apposed to static design.

This way, users can speed up their prototyping process and enables them to test out and demo movement in their apps at much earlier stages.

Remixer

Remixer is a real-time, on-device, connected UI tweaker. Designers and developers can create prototypes of apps that they can interact with directly, and with it, they can also make adjustments on-the-fly to Android, iOS and web interfaces.

App makers can also change values across multiple devices.

Putting The Tools Into A New Home

To make things easier for designers and developers, Google also launched Material.io. In its quest to make all of Material Design accessible, the company put existing works together into one place.

The website and its tools are not exclusively meant for people trying to work with Material Design; they're also for those that are inspired by the same philosophy. The idea of integrating the motion and feel of apps early in the design process is essential to Material Design. So in the website, Google establishes a new visual identity to those that have interest in the the design's initiatives.

People can get support on the latest visual guidance, as well as releases from tools and reusable components.

The goal of Material.io is to focus on different aspects of design process, and to streamline the works. And besides the listed tools above, Google also included a Resizer as an interactive viewer, and Devices that is essentially a list of device sizes, resolutions and more.

With the set of tools, Google hopes that ti will get more designers and developers to adopt Material Design in their work.

There is no denying that Facebook is big, and its expansion is not going to stop anytime soon. Beating about anything else on the web, Facebook is on top of the food chain.

At some points of its life, Facebook has been a popular platform for mini web games and such. This time, the social network giant wants to again dive into the gaming world, for real. The effort started in May 2016 when it introduced Games Arcade. On November 2nd, 2016, the company changes the name to become Facebook Gameroom, a platform conference for games.

Launched for developers, Gameroom is dedicated to PC apps that thrive on Steam. The digital distribution platform developed by Valve Corporation, Steam itself has 125 million users. Facebook on the other hand, has 1.75 billion.

Doing the math, Facebook is a confident competitor.

And as one of its appeal, Facebook is putting its own advertising platform into it. This way, game developers can market their products to gamers. For a 30 percent revenue share (same as Steam), Facebook wants to take away Steam's market share to become the hub for games.

Facebook as popular as it can be, is still losing to iOS and Android in terms of mobile. Back in the 2009, Facebook was still for desktop. That time, it has built a massive business on game payments by partnering with Zynga and others.

But that business has crumbled when mobile gaming of iOS and Android started to get traction. Casual web games were replaced, and gaming on Facebook is nothing more than just a history.

Covering that defeat, Facebook is taking the other way around. Gameroom is its big push into PC games, and the app itself is openly available to download on Windows 7 and up.

What Gameroom does, is allowing gamers to play web, ported mobile and native games dedicated to PC app, free from News Feed distraction.

Valve has lesser users. But it's influence in gaming has reached a large scale. Facebook that is just starting the business, needs to fight an uphill battle by convincing developers that Gameroom is able to share its massive social network reach.

It also needs to persuade gamers that a more social gaming is worth their time.

Meanwhile, Steam might be the favorite place for hardcore gamers. But Facebook with its influence, social media reach and a much larger potential users and reach, has a huge untapped wealth of capabilities, if Facebook can do it right.

Facebook is redesigning its in-app camera for meet the era of augmented reality. Not the first in the business, Facebook is again copying its competitor, and that competitor is no others than Snapchat (again).

Snapchat is one of Facebook's competitor. While living inside the same sphere, the two couldn't be any different, and aren't competing in the same league. Facebook is far larger and is having a lot more influence in the social media industry, but Snapchat is still in many people's hearts.

Facebook may not be able to squash Snapchat. But by copying one of its best features, Facebook wants to take more of Snapchat's market to be its own.

The features were first introduced by Snapchat as animated selfie masks, overlaid graphics, geofilters and art-themed style transfer filters. Facebook calls it "the new camera", and it's accessible from the News Feed in Facebook's app.

First introduced in August 2016 during the Olympics, now the company is testing it by placing more Snapchat-esque features into it.

With some added innovations, Facebook wants that same thing, and it's now having it.

The feature began testing on October 28th, 2016 in Ireland. the company said that it will test more feature variations before rolling them out globally.

"We want to make visual sharing on Facebook fast, fun, and flexible," said Facebook's Product Manager Sachin Monga.

While the feature is indeed a copy of yet another Snapchat feature, what Facebook wants is to revitalize the original sharing capability of Facebook, which has declined over the year.

The new camera feature for Facebook is seen as the next iteration of camera. With Facebook's influence, this can be many people's first experience in augmented reality and selfie masks. This happened thanks to the company's acquisition of MSQRD.

Facebook wants the feature to complement the News Feed, not its primary attraction. This is seen as Facebook puts it in a more conservative space, out of sight off-screen next to the News Feed. But by making it quickly accessible with a swipe or tap of the Camera button, Facebook wants the feature to be there whenever its users are wanting some engaging mirror selfies.

Once the new feature is accessed, users can swipe down to see the different filters Facebook is providing. A tap on the Creative Tools button will allow the user to add more effects. And for last, the geofilters will stylize graphics describing where the users are.

While the features of the new camera are similar to Snapchat's, Facebook puts a bit of its own innovations into them. For example: they cover the screen in leaves so users can wave around with their arm. There is the little colored line patterns that users can disrupt with their movements.

After users are done playing with the feature, they can then post it to the News Feed like regular posts. The only difference is that the photos shot with the in-app camera will appear differently. Users can also share the pictures they've made to the new Direct private messaging feature. Here, they can create private conversations with someone they want without having other "friends" to comment.

The person the user wants to share with, can directly view and respond to the Direct message. If he/she doesn't respond within 24 hours, without using the replay, the conversation automatically disappears. This again, is similar to Snapchat's direct messaging feature.

More: How Many Of Your Social Media Friends Are Actually Your "Friends"?

If You Can't Beat Nor Buy Them, Copy Them

There is a saying that says: "If you can’t beat them, buy them". Snapchat is one of the competitors that probably gave Facebook a headache. With high engagement from its more targeted users, Snapchat is popular in its own way.

Facebook has tried to acquire Snapchat back in 2013, but founder and CEO Evan Spiegel turned down the offer. Because joining Snapchat isn't an option, since then, Facebook copied more than several Snapchat's features, and clone them as if they're its own.

Facebook's purpose to copy and launch the feature is to make users to share more visuals. Facebook wants more engagement, and there aren't many things better to get a higher engagement than introducing a feature that allows silly and funny things to be shared.

By having more feature, Facebook that is the most popular social media, is becoming a behemoth king sitting on its throne. While it still have the reasons to hold that position, the more features it introduces, the more fragmented it becomes.

For example, Facebook's Direct and Messenger are completely two different beings. While the strategy is clear: making them do their bests without confusing users, but it makes things at Facebook more complicated than they were.

The many ways to share and be on Facebook, makes experience to feel more redundant. Facebook has more than several products that overlap, and things aren't getting simpler as Facebook puts even more things into them.

That fact is a compliment for a free service by a giant company with plenty of resources to spend. With more users than practically anything on the internet, Facebook can introduce new features that people can't escape. The company can test, do R&D live, and won't have that much problem with revenues.

And this Snapchat-esque camera is just another way Facebook wants to be young again after more than a decade becoming king. Facebook may never be the new Snapchat: with its influence, it doesn't need to be as cool as the original. What it wants is to tease competitor's loyalists.

Further reading: Facebook, Instagram Vs. Snapchat: Copying To Eliminate The Threats

Microsoft is aiming for a new goal, and that is to make things easier for users to capture, create and share in 3D. To...

Google Dart was created, and was meant to take on JavaScript as the default language of the web. The programming...

Back in August 2016, Bing has began inviting users to pilot their own Expanded Text Ads (or ETAs). With requests and...

It's almost Halloween, and spooky things happen in October. Just in time, MIT scientists have succeeded in creating an...

The social giant Facebook has launched 360 videos in 2015. On that same year, the company also launched 360 photos...