Bytes: What’s new in tech

Crowdsourcing your social networks

Are you ready for this Jelly? asked Matt Peckham in Time.com. A new app by that name, launched last week by one of the founders of Twitter, lets you post a photo to everyone in your extended social network and ask them to help answer whatever question you might have about it. “Instead of search-engining your way to solutions, you’re relying on whatever someone decides to type in response to a question.” In theory, the app “has the potential to be a wellspring of information, a repository of answers you’ll never be able to glean from a nonsentient search engine.” But it’s unclear whether the answers you get from Jelly will be any more useful or definitive than the ones you get from a trusted search engine. If users simply end up giving answers they cut-and-pasted from Google, Jelly may wind up being “something that exists less to improve or even distill a process than piggyback on one.”

The rise of smartwatches

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“2014 will probably be the year of the smartwatch,” said Christopher Mims in Qz.com. If the rumors are true, tech giants such as Apple and Google are both expected to unveil their takes, “which might do better than the disappointments from Samsung and Sony.” And expect “an avalanche of competitors” among gadgets that track health and fitness, where devices such as Fitbit, Jawbone’s Up, and Nike’s FuelBand dominate the battlefield. As wearable devices become more powerful—such as Pebble’s “pioneering” smartwatch, which has embraced iOS compatibility using new software updates—smartwatches could quickly “lose the nerd stigma that they and other wearables currently have.”

Sending Gmail without an address

Get ready to trash your address book, said Juan Carlos Perez in PCWorld.com. Google “has deepened the integration between its Google+ social network and Gmail,” adding a feature that could make storing email addresses as obsolete as memorizing phone numbers. The new function allows Gmail users to send mail to their Google+ contacts “without knowing their email address.” Users concerned about keeping their addresses private shouldn’t worry—“email senders will not see the email address of the Google+ contact being auto-suggested unless the contact responds to the message.” They can also choose to opt out altogether, or “limit the feature to include only people they have added to their own circles.”