Along with the announcement of Android M, Google also has
improved the Google Now so it will understand the context better and more alert
in performing its duties as a personal assistant.
Context Engine which becomes the brain of Google Now is now
able to recognize more than 100 million locations in the world, while Knowledge
Graph that's utilized by Google Now to answer the questions given by users now
have access to around 1 billion entity.
However, a very interesting new feature is called 'Now on
Tap'. Simply put, this feature allows you to access Google Now from any
application, without leaving the application. Nevertheless, Google Now here
will understand the context related to what is visible on the smartphone
screen.
For example, you receive an email from a friend who invites
you to watch a movie. Still in the Gmail application, you can press and hold
the Home button to 'call' Google Now. Interestingly, without receiving any
instruction from you, Google Now will immediately display a card containing
information about the film, and from there you can see the detail information.
Another example is when you're going to have dinner with a
friend. Google Now can display information about a restaurant that's being
discussed in the IM application (Instant Messaging) automatically due to its
reliable natural language processing capability.
The last example is when you are listening to a song, you
can say "OK Google, who's the lead singer", and Google Now will
display information about the lead singer of the band.
Project Brillo
Outside the Android field, apparently Google is targeting
the IoT (Internet of Things) seriously. Utilizing the assets and expertise of
the Nest team - which is very experienced in the smart home segment - plus the
extra power from the Android and Chrome OS developer team, Google is developing
a new operating system that's designed specifically for IoT devices.
Carrying the codename of Project Brillo, this new OS can be
regarded as a mini version of Android with the basic feature that's needed by
IoT devices. The required hardware specification is fairly minimal, so the
light devices such as smart door lock is still able to run it.
Accompanying the Project Brillo is API called Weave. So far
there has been no much information about Weave, but we can be sure that this
API is designed as a communication bridge between the IoT devices - both of
which runs the Project Brillo or not - with a smartphone and cloud.
Google also wants to simplify the setup process of IoT devices
into one centralized application. From this application, you can set up and
define the configuration of all the smart home peripherals that communicate via
Weave.