Harman tops Sonos with an SDK that ties Omni Wireless HD speakers into smart homes

When Harman launched its Harman Kardon Omni Wireless HD multi-room audio system last year, some of the speakers had dormant features, such as an embedded microphone in the Omni 20 speaker shown above. On Thursday, the company announced the availability of an Android software development kit (SDK) that third-party software developers are using to leverage those features. (Harman already has an SDK for iOS devices.) Harman is hoping some of those coders will build apps that incorporate its Omni speakers into connected-home platforms.

Harman VP of Developer Community and Programs Kevin Hague demonstrated one such app for me yesterday. As Steely Dan played on a group of Omni 10 and Omni 20 speakers, Hague pulled out his phone and said "Wouldn't it be great if you could use your multi-room audio system as a paging system?" Touching a button on the phone's screen, he said "Kids, it's time for dinner." Less than a second later, the music paused and his recorded message played on the speaker. The music resumed right after.

That's just one example of what Harman is thinking its speakers can do. The company is hoping third-party software developers will come up with many more. "You don't always have your phone in your pocket, especially when you're relaxing at home, "Hague said. "But you might have an Omni 20 in every room. Imagine being able to control the lighting or adjust the thermostat by walking over to the speaker and talking to it."

Why this matters: Personally, I'd love to have one app that ties together all the systems in my connected home--security, lighting, climate control, entertainment, window shades (currently on my wish list), and more--without having to do any custom programming. The paging feature Hague demonstrated is a great idea, and I imagine independent developers will think of many more: Play a pre-recorded message when the home-security system detects an intruder; use voice commands to play, pause, and resume a song; create playlists for various moods that automatically set a room's lighting to match are just a few examples. 

Harman's SDK could be a Sonos-killer

The demo showed how Harman's software lets speakers integrate with your home systems. Voice commands, for example, would be relayed to your home's Wi-Fi router, which would then pass it along to whichever hub you use to control your home's systems. Harman's software can also identify the status of speakers, determine the strength of the Wi-Fi signal, and receive events--such as volume control adjustments--back from the speaker. Harman had previously announced a strategic partnership with the crowd-sourced product-development outfit Quirky to jointly develop a future generation of speakers, so it's conceivable that the Omni line could tie into the Wink connected-home hub that Quirky spun out in 2014.

Speaker systems are a mature market, with the notable exception of wireless speakers. But when you're talking about multi-room wireless speakers like Harman's Omni series, no one has been able to dislodge Sonos. I've spoken with custom installers who build very high-end entertainment systems for very wealthy clients, and many of them include Sonos hardware in their projects.

If Harman uses its SDKs to exploit the biggest weakness in Sonos's armor--its tightly closed, proprietary architecture--it could enjoy considerable success. Harman's Omni system already offers a number of features that you can't get with Sonos, not the least of which is the ability to stream music at sampling rates of 96kHz with 24-bit resolution (Sonos is limited to 48/16). You can also use Bluetooth to stream music to one Omni speaker and have it rebroadcast to the rest of the network--Sonos doesn't support Bluetooth streaming at all. Hague also told me Harman is working on increasing the Omni's specs to support 196/24 files.

Harman's demo showed just a hint of what its Omni Wireless HD speakers could do in a connected home. What scenarios can you think of? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section, below.

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Android TV's second act: More apps, better hardware, and new features

Until now, there haven't been a whole lot of reasons to care about Android TV. While Google's software isn't inherently bad, devices like the Nexus Player have suffered from too few apps and a shortage of selling points over Roku, Apple TV, and Amazon's Fire TV. Google isn't giving up, however, and at this week's I/O developers conference, the search giant talked up how it'll put Android TV on the map.

Let's start with the app problem: As we've noted in our TV app showdown, Android TV hasn't gotten much love from major content providers. That's going to change over the next few months, as apps roll out for HBO Go, HBO Now, CBS News, CBS Sports, CNET, Epix, Fox Sports, FX Now, Fox Now, Fox News, Epix, WWE, UFC, USA Today, Buzzfeed Video, Vimeo, Qello, Vudu, and Twitch. (The timing on each app is unclear, but I'm told CBS apps are arriving now.)

Google is also going to do something it should have done a while ago: List more TV apps in the Play Store. Previously, the company only showed a selection of apps in the Store, and the only way to find unlisted apps was to search for them, making the catalog seem smaller than it actually was. An update to the Play Store will make it easier to discover those apps that weren't listed before.

Beyond just standalone apps, Android TV has a Live Channels app that combines linear television (such as cable TV or over-the-air channels) and streaming sources into a traditional-looking channel guide. Live Channels has actually been available since day one, but now it's getting new streaming channels including TED, Vevo, Huffington Post, Bloomberg, The Weather Network, AOL, and Pluto.

Getting Live Channels to appear, however, is still a bit convoluted. You need either a television with Android TV built-in (Sony and Sharp both make them), so you can plug in your cable box or an antenna, or you have to connect a networked TV tuner such as HDHomeRun. But Sascha Prueter, a program manager for Android TV, told me the company's looking at ways to offer streaming-only Live Channels to all users.

Google is also playing catch-up on a couple features we've found in other set-top boxes. Later this year, a software update to Android M will add USB mass storage support (so you can put your media on a hard drive and plug it into an Android TV box) and support for Bluetooth headphones.

As for hardware, Google didn't announce anything at I/O, but Nvidia is now shipping its Shield Android TV box. At $200, it's a lot pricier than the competition, but it does support 4K streaming, and it has some neat gaming features.

None of this guarantees success for Android TV. As a relatively new platform, it doesn't have the word-of-mouth appeal of its competitors, and the hardware doesn't come as cheap. (Even at discounted pricing, the $79 Nexus Player is more expensive than a Roku 2, Apple TV, or Amazon Fire TV Stick.) But if Google can flesh out its app selection and turn Live Channels into a killer tool, Android TV could be worth a little extra.

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Windows 10 Build 10130 adds Cortana button, new icons, Start improvements

Microsoft continues to polish the scuff marks on Windows 10 with its latest Build 10130. The new build, released Friday for download via the Fast Ring of the Windows 10 Insider program, adds new icons, some default behaviors for virtual desktops and even a manual trigger for the Cortana virtual assistant. There are some more Start menu tweaks, too.

Microsoft hasn't yet committed to a release date for Windows 10, but it's expected in July. Assuming that's more or less true, there's little time left to add new features. "As I mentioned with the last build, from here onward you are going to see a lot of tuning, tweaking, stabilizing, and polishing which means fewer big feature changes from build to build," Gabe Aul, who oversees the Insider program, said in a blog post. "You'll see that in this build which has a number of small improvements and more polish."

Why this matters: Microsoft is well into the "tweaking" stage of Windows 10. Some features still need to be refined, such as the Edge browser, but some of the work now centers around allowing users to configure and personalize their experiences. This helps Insiders settle in to their Windows 10 preview builds, and also lets everyone begin to see what the final look and feel of Windows 10 will be.

Personalization priorities

As we began to see with Windows 8.1, Microsoft is providing more and more configuration options for the Start menu. As before, the new Start Menu in Windows 10 combines the Live Tiles and menu options of both Windows 8 and Windows 7. What the Start menu offers now are the choice to turn off and on app suggestions, recently opened apps, and even to jump right to the full-page Start menu at launch.

Likewise, Microsoft has declared a winner in the layout for virtual desktops, which group windows and apps in standard layouts that can be switched out. The debate concerned which apps were shown in the taskbar below: every  app running on the machine, or just those within the desktop itself. The latter, "filtered taskbar" won out, and is now the default behavior--but fans of the alternative can change it via the Settings app > System > Multitasking > Virtual Desktops.

You'll also find that the app menus have returned to the tablet mode of Continuum. That particular feature was demanded by Insiders, Aul said.

Users can now unpin the Cortana menu in the Microsoft Edge browser, as well as the Favorites pane and Reading pane, too. Just look for the little pin icon to the upper right.

A new look for icons, others

A more controversial update may be the new icons that Microsoft has added to Windows 10. As you can see in the collection shown below, they mix older and newer visual styles. "In earlier preview builds, we heard our design was too flat and lacked richness," Aul wrote. "We've since iterated to deliver a balance between mono line style icons on mobile, and the three dimensional depth of desktop icons. The new icon set is familiar, yet fresh and usable."

Don't expect things to remain the same, though--Microsoft plans to iterate new icons even as it tweaks other features. 

Likewise, Microsoft also tweaked the new "jump lists" on the taskbar, which explode out with options when you click on them.

 Finally, there's the new Cortana button: the WIN key C. Microsoft positioned this as an option for keyboard users, and that's plausible. It might also be an option for those who lack modern PC hardware and an active mic--or an acknowledgement that the "Hey Cortana" active-listening feature needs some tweaking. 

Other improvements include allowing movies to be played back in the Movies & TV app in full screen, as well as a new Print to PDF function.

Are there bugs? Sure. Wi-Fi connectivity issues have been reported, Aul wrote, and may require a restart. The Mail app may crash and not sync mail properly. Aul also said that the recent Build 10122 won't be pushed to the Slow ring, due to a bug (which I experienced) that gave some users fits when trying to upgrade to the new build.

In all, however, Windows 10 continues to become more refined. Aul said the company is still on track for a summer launch, which is looking more and more like July.

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Internet bandwidth study shows that people can't get enough Netflix

Internet denizens must really love their Netflix--so much so that according to a recent study, the streaming service accounts for over a third of peak-hour downstream Internet traffic in North America.

The numbers come to us via the networking firm Sandvine, whose latest Global Internet Phenomena report shows that Netflix streams gobble up 36.5 percent of Noth America's downstream traffic during "peak evening hours."

But Netflix isn't the only video streaming service that has made a dent on the Internet: the company also says that HBO's two streaming services, HBO Go and HBO Now, "accounted for 4.1% of traffic on one US fixed network" during the fifth-season premiere of Game of Thrones.

Meanwhile, the company found that BitTorrent traffic is declining as a percentage of Internet traffic, making up 6.3 percent of traffic on North American broadband networks. Sandvine also found that Facebook and Google comprise 60 percent of mobile Internet use in Latin American countries.

Why this matters: At first blush, Sandvine's data may seem to be merely interesting bits of trivia, but it underscores the profound impact streaming media has had on the Internet as a whole. All you have to do is look at the Internet's looming capacity crunch.The fact that BitTorrent is in decline also speaks to the rise of convenient, affordable legal digital media services such as Netflix, iTunes, and Spotify. 

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Newegg just leaked the Windows 10 price and release date

Although Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for those who own a Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 PC, someone will have to buy a copy at retail--and on Saturday, Newegg accidentally published the price and ship date for Windows 10.

WinSuperSite appears to have been first to discover the pricing information. What hasn't been confirmed, however, is whether the leak is accurate. 

With that said, here's the critical information: Windows 10 will be available for purchase on August 31, according to a page on the retailer's site. An OEM copy of Windows 10 Home will cost $109; an OEM copy of Windows 10 Professional will cost $149. Neither page lists any substantive differences between the Home and Professional editions of Windows 10, the two versions of Windows 10 designed for home PCs.

By contrast, Newegg charges $100 and $140, respectively, for a 64-bit copy of Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Pro. 

Microsoft officials declined to confirm Newegg's information. "We are excited to offer a free upgrade to Windows 10 for qualified new or existing Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices that upgrade in the first year," a spokeswoman said in an email. "Windows 10 will be available this summer, and we look forward to sharing more details about how the upgrade will be offered at a later date." 

Why this matters: Even if Microsoft hasn't officially confirmed these details (and we suspect that's coming in short order), we now have a major retailer backing the prognostications of other industry sources. As for the price--well, it's good to know that Windows 10 will be in the same ballpark as Windows 8.1 was.  The bottom line is that more and more pieces of the Windows 10 picture are falling into place.

A summer Windows 10 launch

Newegg's release date adds to the clamor of sources suggesting Windows 10 will launch in late July. On Friday, for example, two independent reports suggested that Windows 10 will launch in late July. In a recent earnings call, AMD chief executive Lisa Su actually used the phrase "the end of July" with regard to the launch of Windows 10.

However, those July dates refer to the dates in which Windows 10 will supposedly be finalized and released to manufacturing (RTM). The Newegg date reflects general availability, or when you'll actually be able to buy a copy. Microsoft has also implied that Insider testers of Windows 10 will receive the final version of Windows 10 that PC makers do--in other words, Windows 10 Insiders could have the final version of Windows 10 before Newegg puts it up for sale.

Newegg also revealed the minimum hardware specs for Windows 10:

• Processor: 1GHz or faster
• RAM: 1GB (32-bit) or 2GB (64-bit)
• Free hard disk space: 16GB
• Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver
• A Microsoft account and Internet access

Otherwise, the Windows 10 description that Newegg attached to its Windows 10 Home listing reveals no major surprises. It highlights that it was developed using feedback from "millions" of people; that it will include Cortana and a new Web browser (Edge); that it will stream games from the Xbox One via the new Xbox app; and it will allow users to take their digital "stuff" everywhere using the OneDrive app.

Microsoft has already said Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users; Microsoft's official blogger, Brandon LeBlanc, confirmed that again Saturday night. 

// // There's some question about how long Microsoft plans to support these free updates. Early on, Microsoft officials said they would support upgraded PCs through the "lifespan" of the device. Recently, however, Microsoft has seemed to imply that the update will be free essentially forever. Microsoft's Tony Prophet said recently, "once you upgrade, you have Windows 10 for free on that device."

This story was updated at 10:02 PM with comment from Microsoft.

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GoogleX head talks moonshoots and need for failure

SAN FRANCISCO -- At GoogleX, failure isn't just a good thing. It's something their engineers strive for.

"We need failures," said Astro Teller, head of GoogleX, the company's secretive innovation lab. "If we are going to build something, we need it to fail and fail quickly so we can learn as much about it as we can. If something doesn't fail, how are we going to learn from it?"

Teller spoke to a packed room Friday at Google I/O, the company's annual developers conference.

His subject was moonshots and failures. The company, he said, needs both.

Actually, according to Teller, everyone needs both moonshots and failures.

"We need to be reminded about the risks we're taking and the long-term things we're looking ahead to," said Teller, who's official title is Captain of Moonshots. "We can all work on moonshots. Working on things that aspire to be 100 times better, rather than 10 times better, is something really worth working toward. When you aspire to make the world that much better, you have to come at it from a new perspective and not depend on what people have done before."

During his talk, Teller touched on various projects the Google X group is working on, including self-driving cars, floating balloons in the stratosphere to bring Internet connectivity to remote areas and the increasingly maligned Google Glass wearable.

Google stopped selling the Glass prototype in January and pulled it out of the public spotlight so the device could be reworked. That move led to speculation that Google planned to kill the entire Glass project.

Teller said that's not the case, and that the computerized glasses have been moved from under the umbrella of GoogleX, and into its own niche at Google.

"Google Glass, I think, is making really good progress," he said. "It's graduated from GoogleX. We'll hear more about that."

He added that GoogleX made one great decision and one really bad decision on Glass.

"The thing we did right was get it out into the world," Teller said. "The Explorer program was the right thing to do. We were trying to learn about the social issues around Glass. But there were ways in which we were doing that, like putting it on a runway, that made people think this was a finished product and not a prototype. We left people with some confusing messages there and I wish we'd done that differently."

Teller also talked about Google's autonomous car project, noting that the car turned into far more than it had initially been expected to be.

For instance, two-and-a-half years ago, Google's auto engineers thought they were basically done with their car efforts. They had added some autonomous tools to the car that they thought would help drivers.

However, when Teller allowed some Google employees to drive the cars home, telling them to make sure they were always engaged with the car, he found that many of them weren't paying attention to their driving at all.

That discovery prompted the GoogleX engineers to get back to work and make a fully autonomous car that required no driver intervention.

"Pretty good most of the time is not good enough for a self-driving car," Teller said. "The cars performed flawlessly. The people did not. People don't pay attention when they're actually supposed to be driving. They're putting on makeup. They're texting... We learned that if you are going to have a self-driving car, it has to go from Point A to Point B with no human intervention."

The GoogleX team also worked on Project Wing, which entailed building an autonomous drone for delivering goods. The team chose to deliver heart defibrillators to people who call 911 to report having a heart attack.

Teller said they figured they could get the potentially life-saving equipment to the person in need much faster.

What they learned, however, was that people generally don't know how to use defibrillators, so the whole project wasn't as helpful as they had hoped it would be.

"They're not easy to use and if you can't use it, it's not as world changing as you'd hoped it would be," Teller said.

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At I/O, Google earns praise for diversity

Amid all the announcements of new technologies, one of the things that stood out about Google's keynote address to attendees of its I/O development conference in San Francisco on Thursday was the diverse group of faces presenting there.

While the tech industry struggles to reach gender parity in its workforce, the Google executives who took the stage represented a range of nationalities and genders. Three of the company's keynote speakers were women: Lead Product Manager Ellie Powers spoke about Google Play for Families, Vice President of Engineering Jen Fitzpatrick discussed how the company is tailoring its services for lower bandwidth connections in the developing world, and Google Now Product Director Aparna Chennapragada discussed the company's virtual assistant.

The high profile of women speakers marked a change from 2013, when Google didn't even have conference t-shirts tailored for women. Since then, the company has undertaken a number of initiatives to draw more women and minorities to the conference, and this year, according to Google, 23 percent of attendees were women, compared to 8 percent in 2013.

Their presence was certainly felt on Twitter, where attendees posted about seeing a line for the women's restroom (a rarity at technology conferences), attending a conference session on Project Loon hosted by Google's Women Techmakers organization, and praising the company's keynote lineup.

It comes at a time when the tech industry is increasingly cognizant of the role and representation of women. Last year, several tech firms including Google released diversity reports showing that their companies were male-dominated, especially in engineering roles. Since then, the companies have pledged to improve the gender balance among their employees.

I/O's cast of presenters was particularly notable in light of Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference. Google's largest competitor in the smartphone arena has been criticized for hosting press events and conference keynotes with a cast of primarily white men. The Cupertino-based company kick's off its developer show June 8, and industry observers will be watching to see if it sticks to the status quo.

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At Google I/O, no huge surprises but a honing of critical products

Gone are the days of skydivers landing on the tops of buildings wearing Google Glass, or new Chromebooks, tablets and smartwatches. This year, the focus of much of Google's big I/O conference was to propel the Android operating system into new areas others have pioneered, like peer-to-peer payments and smart home appliances.

There were no new hardware platforms, like Google Glass, Android TV or Android Auto. No new smartwatches like the LG G and Samsung Gear Live that debuted last year, marking Google's entrance into the watch market.

Instead, Google confirmed rumors this week by giving us Brillo, a stripped-down version of Android to power things like smart light bulbs and Internet-connected toasters and let them be controlled by Android devices. It might be radical were it not for Samsung, Apple and Microsoft developing similar systems.

And Google tried again with mobile payments, replacing the Google Wallet service with Android Pay as its system for shopping in stores using Android phones. Google Wallet will become a new app to let people send each other money. This is well-trodden territory, with Apple Pay already letting people purchase items in stores with their iPhones, and with apps like Venmo, Square Cash and now Facebook Messenger for peer-to-peer payments.

Yet these might be just the right moves for Google. With these introductions, Google is positioning itself for what may become a popular new form of commerce and for a whole new world of home automation. Meanwhile, other new Android advances revealed at the conference could make the OS more useful and draw more people into Google's panoply of services and devices.

"Google didn't so much play it safe as focus on the big opportunities and tweak their offerings," said Paul Jackson, an industry analyst at Ovum.

This year's conference may also reveal Google as a more mature company, he said, focusing on core opportunities and avoiding repeats of failed products like Glass, Google , or Nexus Q, a black orb for playing music.

Android is already the world's most popular mobile operating system, installed on the majority of smartphones across the U.S., Europe and China as of the end of March, according to data from Carolina Milanesi, a mobile analyst at research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. However, in the U.S., more people cited the low cost of Android devices as the reason to buy them compared to iOS devices.

New features revealed at I/O make Android devices compelling for reasons besides price. The "Now on Tap" feature in the upcoming Android M release aims to predict what information people will want before they even know they want it, based on their activity inside mobile apps. So if you're reading an email from a friend inviting you to a movie, hitting the home button will show more information about the movie, including a link to its trailer on YouTube.

There were some futuristic technologies at I/O that could be considered radical. Whether Google can turn them into meaningful businesses is less clear.

It showed a smart fabric it developed with sensors woven in. Google said it was partnering with Levi's to create clothing that people could touch to control their smartphones. No details on a launch date or price were given.

I/O also showed Google pushing hard into virtual reality. Cardboard, a low-cost device for VR, launched last year but only worked with Android apps on Android phones. Now it can work with any smartphone, including iPhones, and Google has launched new programs to expand Cardboard content.

One of those programs is Expeditions, a Cardboard app for classrooms that will send students on virtual field trips to places as far away as Mars. But as PCWorld's Florence Ion asks after trying it out, do kids really want to stare inside a box and spin around in a chair?

Maybe that's why Google, at least at this year's I/O, emphasized more earthly aspirations.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

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The NSA reportedly tried -- but failed -- to use a Stuxnet variant against North Korea

Right around the time that the Stuxnet attack so famously sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2009 and 2010, the U.S. National Security Agency reportedly was trying something similar against North Korea.

The NSA-led U.S. effort used a version of the Stuxnet virus designed to be activated by Korean-language computer settings, but it ultimately failed to sabotage North Korea's nuclear weapons program, according to a Friday Reuters report, which attributed the information to people familiar with the campaign.

The NSA did not respond to a request for comment.

The Stuxnet attack -- widely reported to be a joint effort by the U.S. and Israel -- succeeded against Iran's nuclear program by destroying at least 1,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges at a nuclear plant near the city of Natanz. In the case of the effort against North Korea, however, U.S. agents reportedly weren't able to access the core machines running the nation's nuclear weapons program.

North Korea is widely known for its self-imposed isolation and secrecy. Police permission is required simply to own a computer, and Internet access is strictly limited. There's also just one primary Internet link to the nation, which comes via China.

It's no secret that the United States is concerned about the nuclear programs in both Iran and North Korea, so it's no great surprise that an effort like this might have been undertaken, said Tim Erlin, director of IT risk and security strategy for Tripwire, a security company.

North Korea's reliance on a single external Internet connection is in many ways both a strength and a weakness for the nation, Erlin added.

On the one hand, it makes the country more vulnerable to both logical and physical denial-of-service attacks, as there's a single point of failure, he said.

On the other hand, "they are simply harder to attack with precision cyber-weapons," Erlin said. There's only one way in, and it's well guarded. "That isolation comes at great cost, of course, but it does provide this advantage."

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