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Google’s already shown hints of expanded Google Now functionality through the use of third-party apps, but not everyone was invited to the party. A select group of developers were let in on the fun this past January, but what about the little guys who might not be recognized as a “top developer” and couldn’t build this functionality into their apps?
According to a Google rep speaking at South by Southwest (SXSW) this morning, that will soon change. Aparna Chennapragada, Google’s director of product manager for Google Now, told of an upcoming open API that developers would be able to tap into in order to provide Google Now cards where and if they make sense.
Unfortunately that’s the extent of any known details. There’s no word on how soon this will be available or what sort of freedom developers would have in supporting Google Now cards. We did get a morsel of information about a forthcoming Google Now card that might show queue times for your favorite attractions at a theme park, though, so there’s that.
If Google Now wasn’t already one of the most informative, useful and fun tools baked into Android, then it’s sure to become all of that and more once developers can make their own cards.
[via NextWeb]
cant wait! this should be interesting on what they can incorporate
Can’t wait for the exciting ways this’ll be abused by SPAMMY devs! After notification spam got bad, Google had to add ways to mute them.
Hopefully it’ll be a REQUIREMENT that each app must ask the user (on first-run) for explicit permission before being able to add Google Now cards.
solid point….very solid. Never thought of that.
True but like any card you will be able to say you’re not interested and it’s gone forever. Assuming this would work the same way
awesome, let the google now clutter begin!
Is it just me, or does anyone else see Google Now becoming the new notification system?
This can actually be a solid replacement for BlinkFeed which has kept me on HTC devices. But as other mentioned, I don’t want to get spammed. But I’m sure there will be settings to disable that.
My guess is we’ll be able to turn on or off certain cards. To me, this is a welcome addition, because there’s definitely some app’s and info I’d like to see within my Google Now cards.
I would use this for my personal finance app I have been tinkering with but I would only add this if I could give the user the ability to turn it off, similar to what I did with regular notifications.
I had a card pop up from the Mint app already. That’s all I’ve seen though. Also a little strange as i’d want to confirm I’d want to see cards about my financial info.
My stocks never shows!
Mine will show for a week or two, then not show for a month or more. I wish there was a way to tell it to show stocks every weekday.
As long as there is an easy way to manage an disable/enable the integration per app I think this is going to be awesome. I have always thought 3rd party apps could make it much more useful.
Given that currently, you can disable any card on Now I don’t see why you won’t be able to.
Pointless devices get even more love. I guess google has closed all the bugs and implemented all the features that they wanted to. Now they can just spend time adding more apis and other crap to android to support these frivolous “watch” things.
Just silly. A whole extra device, with a lot less functionality that needs to be charged. For what? You can do everything you need with your phone, what the heck is the point of the watch?
Google now works on the phone. I don’t own a smartwatch but use google now all the time.
You missed the point entirely. Google Now works on phones, Chromebooks, and I believe Chrome browser.
As for Wear, it’s very useful personally as I receive notifications ubiquitously and allows me to be connected while I work hands free. I also use it to track fitness and sleep cycles, so it comes as an all in one package personally. YMMV