Month: May 2016

(credit: Flickr user Scott Jones)

Intelligent design, the argument that life is so complex that it must have needed a sophisticated designer, was formulated to get around court rulings that banned creationism from being taught in science classes. For a while, there was an effort to get intelligent design into schools, but that came crashing down after a court case in Dover, Pennsylvania, recognized it as inherently religious. That court case is now more than a decade old, and it looks like some school districts have a short memory.

Zack Kopplin, an activist who has tracked attempts to sneak religious teachings into science classrooms, found a bit of sneaking going on in Youngstown, Ohio. There, a document hosted by the city schools includes a lesson plan that openly endorses intelligent design and suggests the students should be taught that there's a scientific controversy between it and evolution.

The document focuses on the "Diversity of Life" and is a bizarre mix of normal science and promotion of intelligent design. Most of the first page, for example, is taken up by evolution standards that have language that echoes that of the Next Generation Science Standards. But the discussion is preceded by a statement that's straight out of the "teach the controversy" approach: "The students examine the content of evolution and intelligent design and consider the merits and flaws of both sides of the argument." In fact, elsewhere in the document, teachers are told to host a debate where students take turns arguing for evolution and intelligent design.

It's not the first time that Google has been sued for its search rankings, but it's among the first in which the company's First Amendment defense is failing.

For the moment, a federal judge in Florida is allowing a search-censorship lawsuit to proceed against Google. Search engine optimization company E-ventures Worldwide claims (PDF) that Google wrongfully removed hundreds of its websites from Google search. E-ventures claims that it did not breach any of Google's terms of service but instead was hit in September 2014 because of "economic" and "anti-competitive" reasons. According to the ruling (PDF) by US District Judge John Steele of Florida:

While a claim based upon Google’s PageRanks or order of websites on Google’s search results may be barred by the First Amendment, plaintiff has not based its claims on the PageRanks or order assigned to its websites. Rather, plaintiff is alleging that as a result of its pages being removed from Google’s search results, Google falsely stated that e-ventures’ websites failed to comply with Google’s policies. Google is in fact defending on the basis that e-ventures’ websites were removed due to e-ventures’ failure to comply with Google’s policies. The Court finds that this speech is capable of being proven true or false since one can determine whether e-ventures did in fact violate Google’s policies. This makes this case distinguishable from the PageRanks situation. Therefore, this case does not involve protected pure opinion speech, and the First Amendment does not bar the claims as pled in the Second Amended Complaint.

Essentially, E-ventures is claiming that because its business focuses on getting websites higher rankings in Google's unpaid search listings, Google removed it and its affiliates so that companies will instead pay Google for higher rankings. "Google hopes that third parties read Google's publications and pay Google to be ranked higher in Google's search results," E-ventures said. "E-ventures hopes that third parties read E-ventures' publications and pay a SEO provider instead of Google to achieve the same result. In sum, Google has an anti-competitive, economic motivation to eliminate the visibility of E-ventures' websites on its search engine."

Example of Android Pay in PaymentRequest.

Today at Alphabet's annual developer's conference, the company announced a host of new tools for developers working with Android Pay—including support for Android Instant Apps, a new feature called PaymentRequest, and improvements to the Save To Android Pay API.

In a call with Ars on Tuesday, Senior Director of Product Management for Android Pay Pali Bhat said that the Android Pay team has been working to increase user signups and encourage continued use of the platform, something that all mobile payment platforms have struggled with in the last five years. “We have to deliver more utility and value," Bhat said.

The new Android Pay features announced today are a means to that end. For instance, Instant Apps—Android's new name for creating an app-like experience without having to download an app—will come with support for an Android Pay checkout feature. If users tap an Instant App URL, the app will run without installing or taking up valuable space on the user's phone. With an Android Pay button, an Instant App from a parking garage could speed along the checkout process, for example.

With Instant Apps, clicking a link can give you an app-like experience even if you don't have the app installed already. (credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Mobile websites are often more convenient than their desktop counterparts when you're on your phone, but they're also usually missing some important functionality that's available (or just easier to find) on the desktop. Apps can help solve the problem, but only if you have the foresight and/or bandwidth to install them when you need them.

Android's just-announced Instant Apps feature, which should be available to all phones running Android 4.2 or later and via an update to the Google Play Services software coming "later this year," will attempt to bridge that gap. Instant Apps are designed to provide the richer, Android-native experience of an app combined with the convenience and the lower data and storage usage of a mobile website.

When users tap an Instant App URL, they are taken directly to an app that runs without installing. Developers who want to offer Instant Apps will have to modularize their apps so that users don't have to install the entire app just to use certain features of it—this is where most of the data savings come from. Google's examples included museum or resort apps with maps and schedules, along with apps that help you pay for parking. These are the kinds of rarely-used apps that are useful in the moment, though you wouldn't necessarily want to install them on your phone beforehand or keep them around afterward. Developers can, however, can provide "call to action" links that encourage users to download and install apps that they find particularly useful.

A screenshot of Allo's predictive replies. "Yum clams!" may have to be attunded to the user's taste.

On Wednesday at Google I/O, the company announced a new messaging app called Allo and a new video messaging app called Duo. Both apps are based on your phone number and are focused on bringing more information to users as they're typing or about to pick up the phone.

Allo's claim to fame is that Assistant is built into the app so that, as you exchange information with someone else, the app can offer auto-replies—even based on photos—or it can see if you're thinking of getting Italian food for dinner and suggest restaurants nearby. The messenger has a wide variety of stickers you can exchange with others, and the “Whisper Shout” function lets users decide how big or small they'd like to send their message to give the impression of volume (NO MORE ALL CAPS WHEN YOU'RE SHOUTING!!!!!). You can also write on pictures that you send and type @google to use the search engine while you're still in the messaging app.

With Allo, third-party developers will be invited to work with Assistant to increase the app's usefulness. OpenTable, for instance, is working with Allo to help users make reservations at a restaurant if they're talking about going there later that evening.

Enlarge / Android Wear 2.0 promises major improvements for Google smartwatches. (credit: Google)

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—Google has provided three major updates to Android Wear since it came to market two years ago—every time the version of Android that Wear is built on top of is updated, Google also adds Wear-specific features. Android 5.0, 5.1, and 6.0 all had corresponding Wear releases that smoothed out rough edges, refined the interface, and made the watches more capable.

Today at its developer conference, Google is announcing Android Wear 2.0, a version number bump that reflects the magnitude of the changes it introduces. The update gives the UI a comprehensive Material Design-themed overhaul, enables compatible watches to do more without a phone attached, introduces some new input methods to make communication easier, and copies one of the things that the Apple Watch gets right. And since it’s based on Android N, it picks up support for features like Data Saver, Java 8, and new emoji, among other platform features. Here are the highlights.

Standalone apps

Probably the biggest addition to Wear 2.0 is the ability for apps to communicate directly over the Internet via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or (for the few watches that have it) cellular, rather than relying exclusively on a tethered phone or cloud syncing between your watch and your phone for communication.