Gadgetory

hey everyone welcome to the inside scoop I'm scene at CRC boy joined by senior rider seth rosenblatt and seth are in the middle of Mobile World Congress right now in barcelona and google has an interesting offer that's starting to bubble up over there it's called a project tango project tango it's perfect for Barcelona tell us a bit more about that so project tango is a really interesting a new 3d mapping tool for mobile phones and it's based on a new processor that allows the phone to see the world render it so that the phone can understand it and then spit it back out on your screen in a way that you can understand it all in the blink of an eye alright sounds cool but how and why would I ever use this sure this could be really really important for people who are vision impaired helping them cross streets helping map the interior of buildings as they're walking as they're moving through a new building for the first time it could tell them this is a wall here's the door here's the elevator that you're looking for this also has gaming implications to be able to turn a real world space especially an indoor space into a game again in the blink of an eye and of course it has you know a lot of fun implications to you can map your room simply by waving your phone around and then you can go to Ikea and get whatever furniture you need so that's what I'm picturing you're gonna hold your phone and is it through the camera that's how we create camera yep okay and just to be clear this is not available immediately this is not available immediately but the CEO of the company that makes the chip that's partnered with google has told me that this is coming in the coming quarters this isn't something five years down the line this is maybe two years down the line if not sooner and do feel like Google is doing this out of pressure to what exactly to just develop their camera app even further or to compete I think this is Google's attempt to do a lot of different things that it comes from an interior group at Google that they picked up from Motorola that has roots in DARPA so they're really interested in pushing what the technology can do but of course Google is obviously looking at this from its traditional wheel houses and it's saying oh well this is mapping Google does really well with mapping indoor mapping has been something that's been challenging and difficult for not just Google for everybody in them in the mapping space so for them to get a leg up especially on something like this is phenomenal I guess what you can see how it could also be paired and partnered with all sorts of other apps to offer what 3d models of the inside of shopping malls for example or stores you know you go into a bookstore where do you find that specific book exactly exactly to go into especially like a used bookstore to use your example and to know exactly where the fiction is or the cookbooks are because you know used bookstores are all different so something like that could have a lot of very basic but very helpful applications and now I'm seeing the partnership between this and Google glass mm-hmm imagine if you didn't even have to hold up your phone exactly exactly so if it's tied to glass if it's tied to other wearables the implications are really exciting I think so the fact that this project even exists it's coming out expect big news coming months in the i would say probably within within two years if not sooner and and the fact that they're working with existing phone makers they're working with Google and Google Android and they're working with chip makers this isn't something where they're going to compete with existing chip makers this is an entirely new kind of hardware chip so again this is going to change a lot of things for a lot of different industries anything else getting you really excited out of a Mobile World Congress you know there is one interesting thing and that is that this push at Mobile World Congress especially this mobile world congress to develop smartphones for emerging markets for the developing world Microsoft and Nokia just released their nokia X and that's a version of Android that runs Microsoft services that's aimed again at people who've never had smartphones and Firefox OS from Mozilla the people who make your firefox browser have come out with a $25 smartphone very basic their dairy somewhere but they are working with partners and they've come up with some very low-end hardware for people's first smartphones because currently we've got about two billion people on the internet and all these vendors are looking at where the two billion are coming from and it's going to be smart phones Nate great to hear about some of the less publicized news out of Mobile World Congress yeah samsung who Seth Rosenblatt I'm cars too boy thanks for watching the inside scoop