Motorola and Google unveil upgradeable modular smartphone platform

Remember that technologicallyutopian future with modular, upgradeable smartphones that I envisioned back in August? It turns out that Motorola has had the same idea. Called Project Ara, Motorola’s R&D department is working on an “open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” with the aim of doing for hardware what Android has done for software. If an open, modular smartphone ecosystem can be realized, it could do wonders for innovation, massively drive down development timelines and total cost of ownership, and finally allow you to do whatever you want with your smartphone, rather than being constrained by draconian measures imposed by carriers and device makers.
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Google Improves Knowledge Graph With Comparisons And Filters,, Brings Cards & Cross-Platform Notifications To Mobile

Google is turning 15 tomorrow and, fittingly, it’s celebrating the occasion by announcing a couple of new features for Google Search. The mobile search interface, for example, is about to get a bit of a redesign with results that are clustered on cards “so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.”
Those answers, Google today announced, are also getting better. Thanks to its Knowledge Graph, the company continues to push to give users answers instead of just links, and with today’s update, it’s now featuring the ability to use the Knowledge Graph to compare things. If you want to compare the nutritional value of olive oil to butter, for example, Google Search will now give you a comparison chart with lots of details. The same holds true for other things, including dog breed and celestial objects. Google says it plans to expand this feature to more things over time.

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