
Android's Google Now services headed for Chrome, too - Pr0
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57558039-93/androids-google-now-services-headed-for-chrome-too/
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abdophoto
Google Now is quite amazing. I wonder when we'll see Siri on the OS X.

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bane
The location aware stuff really is cool. I found that after a few days I
stopped looking at it though since my daily routine wasn't really changing.

Then the other night I was walking by a local theater on the way to dinner,
and thought I'd check the weather for an upcoming out-of-town trip. It knew I
was near a theater and suggested upcoming showtimes, and then had no problem
getting my weather request filled from a voice search.

So yeah, it's really cool, but I haven't yet found a way to remember to seek
it out.

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pkulak
My family usually puts addresses on calendar events, and it's always fun to
have my phone beep at me 15 minutes before I need to leave the house, based on
current traffic. Then you tap on the notification and you get a map with the
option to start navigation.

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briggers
It's a promising direction, but the diff is really just a stub at this stage.

I used to think Siri would be the beginnings of ambient intelligence, but it
seems like Google cares more about the idea.

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Evbn
You just noticed that Google is into AI and Apple isn't?

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briggers
If by AI you mean artificial intelligence, then no - I agree it's pretty
obvious Google is more into AI than Apple.

But if by AI you mean ambient intelligence (what I said) then wat. Siri was
widely available before Google took steps in this direction. This is the
opposite of what you've said, though Google Now has since surpassed Siri in
performance. Moving it into the browser increases reach and more fully
realises the vision of ambient intelligence.

Should I stop assuming people know what is meant by 'ambient intelligence?'

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mmanfrin
The shuttering of IG suddenly makes sense.

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bane
How so? Now doesn't seem to make any sense to me one the desktop (location
aware notifications?) while I use IG many many many times per day to watch
news feeds, common sites I like to go to, etc. It just organizes the stuff I
care about, but it's what _I_ want rather then how Now tries to figure it out
for me.

I've found Now useful on my phone, don't get me wrong, but I might consult it
once a week or less.

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mmanfrin
Not justifying it at all -- I use IG as well and think it is absurdly dumb of
them to shutter it. However, it now _makes sense_ as to why they'd close it:
they're trying to get people to use Google Now instead.

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3825
Just to be clear, you are talking about iGoogle[1], right?

[1]:
[https://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](https://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2664197)

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mmanfrin
Yes.

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gruuby
Chrome is getting bloated. It was so nice and lean when I first touched it
years ago.

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ok_craig
I love it when people say things like this without providing specifics. Not
sure what you guys are talking about. The UI is the same and it seems to work
just as well or better for me.

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gruuby
For one thing, I don't want the Flash plugin, also sync. Chrome feels slower
and slower, I'm sorry that this upsets you.

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ok_craig
It doesn't upset me when people notice a fact of reality, if it actually is
the case. If Chrome was slow, it would be slow and a valid thing to point out,
and we could discuss it.

But when someone makes a claim without giving any examples at all, that's kind
of annoying. That's what leads to popular conceptions based only on accusation
and rumors. But A+ for passive aggression.

Flash and sync are features that have been in Chrome for a really long time.
So they're not an example of Chrome "getting bloated." _If_ Chrome is slower
now than it was in the past, it isn't because of these, since previous
versions of Chrome that you'd be using for the comparison also had these
features.

You might just want to check your system for laggy spyware. It's always
possible that Chrome could get worse over time and slower than before, but
it's not something that's showing up in CPU or memory usage like it clearly
was for Firefox when it started to get worse.

So I believe it might be slower for you, but if it is, it's probably not
because of feature creep or "bloating." An anecdote isn't a trend.

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lighthazard
Coming to a browser near you but not your phones from 1 year ago.

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spinchange
Now if they would just fix the black-box browser sync...

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3825
I thought sync was just xmpp messages. I really don't know what that means but
I was told it is like the browser is talking to the server soon after there is
a configuration change just like the way I chat with someone on google talk.
Am I barking up the wrong tree?

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spinchange
I was referring to there being no way to access or manipulate the "master" set
of sync data on their servers - other than to delete it. There used to be a
bookmarks folder that contained it in the user's docs account, but it is no
longer available.

It's problematic if you have multiple clients and had previously used
something like Xmarks. My meticulously curated folders and bookmarks get
messed up across devices pretty fast, even after deleting sync data and
starting fresh from a clean backup of bookmarks.

