It does a whole lot of tasks -- but
you still have to work harder than you should to get stuff done.
Think about it: When your friend
texts you to meet at 8 at a particular restaurant, it will probably take you
three minutes to set up a calendar event for yourself.
You have to close out of your
messaging app, open your calendar app, set the name
of the event and the time. Then you have to go to the Google app, search for
the restaurant, find the address, open the calendar app again and paste it into
the event's location field.
That's why Google invented Now on
Tap, one of the coolest products the search company has ever released.
Now on Tap promises to take that
texting scenario from three minutes down to three seconds.
Here's how it would work: Once you
receive the text, hold down your home button and say, "OK Google, set a
calendar appointment for this." ...and that's it.
Now on Tap, which is exclusively
available in the latest version of the Android, does two really innovative
things.
First, from any website or app on
your Android smartphone, you can hold down the home button to get instant
information about what's currently on your screen.
Second, you can bark commands at Now
on Tap or ask questions related to what you're looking at.
So when you're reading a story in
the Bleacher Report app about Tom Brady, you can say, "OK Google, how many
touchdowns has he thrown?" and your phone will read you the answer out
loud (408). It knows who "he" is, because the story is about Tom
Brady.
Or when your wife tells you to she
wants to see the movie, "Bridge of Spies," you can hold down the home
button and instantly get reviews and news about the film.
None of that was possible before
without exiting an app you were in and opening a browser page or another app.
Now on Tap lets you stay within the app you're currently using.
That's hugely helpful, because 80%
of the time people spend on their phones is in apps, according to Google.
That's a very different experience from laptops, where a Google search is just
a right click or a new tab away.
"Assistance is the new
black," said Aparna Chennapragada, project manager for Google Now.
"We're trying to figure out how we can understand your context, how we can
get you quick, actionable information and how we can help you get stuff
done."
The promise is great. But right now,
it's very early days for Now on Tap. Today, it essentially just copies and
pastes relevant text from your screen into a Google search to get relevant
information.
It launched with a focus on
restaurants, music, movies and people. You can get locations for places to eat,
links to play songs, reviews for films or information about celebrities. Google
Now on Tap also recommends apps that might have more information about what
you're looking for.
Down the road, Now on Tap could do
so much more.
Imagine reading an interesting story
and saying, "OK Google, send this to my wife." Or maybe you're in a
recipe app, and you hold down the home button to add the recipe to your
shopping list.
That kind of stuff is coming.
Chennapragada said Google Now on Tap will follow the same playbook of Android's
proactive "Google Now" assistant: start with a small handful of
interactions at launch and then "iterate the heck out of it." (Google
Now wasn't much to look at a couple years ago, but now it's one of Android's
best features).
There are technical hurdles to clear
before it gets there. For instance, the Now on Tap team still needs to figure
out your intent: When you hold down the home button, do you want to know the
next news story about Donald Trump, or do you want to know what his Twitter
handle is?
Though that's not trivial, it's
something that Chennapragada believes will soon be overcome.
"The smartphone just needs to
get smarter," Chennapragada said. "I'm doing a lot more heavy lifting
than the goddamned thing and it needs to be the other way around. It is with me
all the time and should know what I care about. -- and it should help me
benefit from other people that have done this task before."
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