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Google's Project Ara modular smartphone gets a trio of dev conferences
Google's got plenty of moonshots brewing in its Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP), but one of the most intriguing is its modular smartphone design, called Project Ara. Because Ara's a platform designed to lets users swap out hardware (processors, cameras, or sensors) on the phone, it presents unique opportunities for developers to build different kinds of modules and the software needed to make them all work. That's why ATAP's going to be doing three developers' conferences this year, with the first one set to happen April 15-16 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Folks that want to attend, but are outside striking distance of the Bay Area need not fret, however, as there will be a live webcast and interactive Q&A sessions of the conference, too. This initial event will focus on building the modules themselves, as Google will be making an alpha version of its Module Developers' Kit available at the beginning of April. We don't know what the other two conferences will be about (though software development for Ara seems a good bet), but more info and the conference agenda can be found at projectara.com in the coming weeks.
Lenovo gets Motorola, but Google gets to keep its skunkworks
Lenovo may be buying a brand to help it sell smartphones across the world, but it's not getting everything that was under Motorola's umbrella. In addition to the "vast majority" of Motorola's patents, Google will also hold onto the Advanced Technology and Projects division and fold it into its Android team. That group is responsible for some of Motorola's more wild-eyed projects, like the authentication pills and tattoos that ATAP chief Regina Dugan showed off at AllThingsD's D11 conference. The most eye-catching example of the group's work was Project Ara, the modular smartphone initiative that first started turning heads in late October. Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside said the prototype phone was nearly done just over a month later, and the company planned to get the Ara module dev kit out the door this winter. It seemed like the team was making real progress, but we'll soon see if those plans have shifted now that Motorola is leaving the building.
