Google I/O: Now on Tap

Another new feature coming up in the soon to be release Android "M" operating system is "Now on Tap".  This will be a feature adding more context aware responses from your mobile device. So in their demo of the product, the question "what is his name?" was asked while a song was playing on the device and "Now on Tap" was able to put it together that the question was in reference to the currently playing media. It then displayed the information about the artist and provided a list of links referencing the artist. This shows that the new updated feature was able to provide a quick answer to question that wasn't specific so it had to be more intuitive about what you were probably asking for.

A second demo showed them looking at an email discussing going to a movie with the movie title listed in the message. By tapping and holding down the Home Button, the system knew that it was being asked a question, searched the message and then found the movie title in the message and brought information about the movie. What went on behind the scenes and what they are really demonstrating is Google's progress in "Natural Language Processing". Google's search is getting better able to determine what it is looking at, or better, what you are looking at, and interpreting all of the things that you might be asking from the presented information. It makes these functions more interactive, and again, more intuitive.

In another example showing "Now on Tap" responding with an actiion, They showed a message from their spouse asking about going out to dinner and a second message stating that they did not get the dry-cleaning. Pressing and holding down the Home Button again, "Now on Tap" presented two cards as a response. The first showed the name of the restaurant and buttons for navigating, calling, Yelp and Open Table so that you could make reservations, see how good the restaurant is, call them for a reservation or get directions on how to get there. The second card provided the ability to add a reminder to "Get the dry-cleaning".

In the fourth example, the context of the screen information was a discussion about Hugh Laurie. By just highlighting his name, "Now on Tap" was able to, without any other interaction, quickly lookup his name and provide more information about Hugh Laurie.

So what what Google was presenting is how responsive the system will be in providing information on the fly from the context of what you are viewing. If this works the way they were showing it, at the speed and responsiveness that they showed, this will truly be a very impressive new feature of the Android operating system.