Google has partnered with Israeli firms for two new projects. The first is its Project Ara and the second is a video commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Israel’s Modu makes really small smart phones. Guinness World Records cited it for producing the world’s lightest touch phone. So it was not surprising that Google chose it to help develop its Project Ara which the company says is intended to make a smartphone with customizable hardware designed exclusively for 6 billion people.
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Looking a little like Lego, the phone will come with a board on which every individual user would be able to attach whatever interchangeable module they wish. Different modules to be offered would perform different functions.
Paul Eremenko, head of Google’s Project Ara, told an audience recently at Engadget’s Engage conference that the phone’s prototype has a pulse oximeter, which measures oxygen content in the blood. The phone, he said, could offer a myriad of medical services.
“The possibilities are endless, ” he said. “For instance, you could buy a jumbo frame and only use half of the screen, the rest could be used as a keyboard. If on a long trip, you could drop a lot of other modules and replace them with battery modules so you don’t run out of power.”
Google hopes to release its first phone next year with a base price of $50.
Meanwhile, if you have done a Google search over the past few days then you saw that the company has once again changed its Logo into a graphic representing an important anniversary. This is called a Google Doodle. If you clicked on it then you would have seen information about the fall of the Berlin Wall which happened back in 1989.
Since Google was in a rush to set up a video the company turned to Israel’s Veed.me. Only two years old, Veed.me was founded by four Israeli film students. The company offers an online platform, connecting businesses with a screened community of reliable and talented videographers.
Google had heard of the Israeli startup and knew that it could provide what they wanted. Veed.me contacted videographers in seventeen different countries around the world where sections of the Berlin Wall which were preserved are on display. Each one filmed the segment in their country and Video.me then put them all together for the video that Google used.
