Google Now is a service that provides you with easy access to relevant information at a glance, including appointments, directions, weather, traffic, and news. You can access Google Now on many recent Android phones by swiping up from the home button or by swiping from the left when you’re on the home screen of a device with the Google Experience Launcher.
Of course, some folks find Google Now kind of creepy: the reason it can offer you information when you need it is because Google is mining your search history, calendar, Gmail, and other apps and services.
Now the developers of CyanogenMod are working on an alternative. They call it CM Home, and you can take it for a spin in the latest nightly builds of CyanogenMod 11.
Update: While CM Home provides access to some information from the same pull-out menu as Google Now, the team says it’s not really supposed to do everything you can do with Google Now.
Like Google Now, CM Home appears when you swipe from the left side of your home screen or up from the bottom. Swipe from the right and you go straight back to the home screen.
What you see on the CM Home screen is a series of cards or widgets with details about things like missed calls, email messages, text messages, alarms, and appointments. You can dismiss cards by swiping.
CM Home is still in the early stages, and it’s likely the utility will become more powerful over time. In order to try it you’ll need a recent nightly build of CyanogenMod 11 and you’ll need to use the default Trebuchet app launcher.
Update: At launch CM Home only reads data from DashClock extensions. Eventually there will be an API that lets other developers make content available to CM Home.
via /r/Android and HDBlog
Funny, this article was suggested to me by Google Now.
I hope CM has bigger plans for this than just a glorified second notification shade. Otherwise this thing is a bit pointless.
Exactly what I wanted to say…
Oh don’t worry, they do 🙂