WebProNews

Tag: Google I/O 2012

  • Google Chromebooks Now Available At 100 Best Buy Stores

    Now, before someone snipes me with a “Chromebooks are already available at Best Buy’s online store,” the significance of this is Google’s portable computer will be available in Best Buy’s brick-and-mortar stores, meaning you can go in and get a hands-on perspective before you lay your money down.

    Naturally, this directly affects American consumers. While there are international Best Buy outlets–Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada and China–as you can see, Europe is lacking Best Buy stores. To address that, Google is making their Chromebooks available in the brick-and-mortar versions of Dixon’s, an electronics retailer in the United Kingdom. During the second day of their I/O presentation, it was also revealed that more stores will be added before the holiday season.

    For those of you who have been interested in buying one of Google’s Chromebooks, but were unsure of making your purchase because you haven’t had an opportunity to play with one, the inclusion of these devices in physical stores should help you in your pursuit of an inexpensive laptop. In case you’re wondering the locations of the participating Best Buys, Google has you covered there, too, thanks to a neat little filter applied to Google Maps:

    Chromebooks Google Maps

    If you can’t read the text at the bottom of the map, it says, “Best Buy stores currently stock the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 (Wi-Fi).” If you want another version, you’re going to have to buy it online.

    [Lead image courtesy]

  • Google Drive For iOS and Chrome OS Announced

    Google’s keynote presentation for its second day of Google I/O has been focusing mostly on mobile. Google sees mobile connectivity as a “revolution” that will bring the unconnected parts of the of the world online.

    As part of its mobile focus, Google has announced that Google Drive is coming to both iOS and Chrome OS. Clay Bavor, director of product management for Google Apps, took the stage during the keynote presentation to show off some of the Google Drive features that have made it into iOS and Chrome OS.

    To demonstrate the iOS version of Drive, Bavor logged into the app on an iPad and demonstrated Drive’s ability to use optical scan technology in its searches. Using image recognition technology, Drive was able to search through a list of unlabeled PDFs and find the search term Bavor used. The technology is also able to recognize the content of photos, and Bavor was able to find a specific unlabeled, untagged vacation picture in his Drive using the word “pyramid.”

    Bavor then briefly demonstrated Google Drive for Chrome OS, showing how easily another person or persons can be added to collaborate and edit a single document “in the cloud.” He then announced a feature Google Drive users have been requesting for quite a while: offline editing.

    As of today, Google Drive now supports offline editing with seamless transitioning. Changes made to a document while in offline mode are saved to a local cache, then quickly synced the next time an internet connection is established.

    Bavor also briefly demonstrated how third party applications are integrated into Drive. He used HelloFax and Lucidchart as quick examples of how the feature works on a Chromebook.

    All of these features will be supported through the Drive SDK version 2, which launches today. The Google Drive app for iOS and Chrome OS will be available later today.

  • Gmail’s User Count Is Incredibly Large (Google I/O)

    So who has the largest amount of unique users regarding web email services? Is it Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail? If you go by last year’s numbers, all three weigh in at about the 300-350 million mark regarding active users, but thanks to a tidbit of information dropped during Day 2 of Google 2012 I/O conference, Gmail may be pulling away from their competitors.

    While transitioning from one segment to another, Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President of Google Chrome said that Gmail has 425 million unique users a month, an increase of 75 million since January 2012.

    The question is, are Gmail’s competitors keeping up with the rapid growth demonstrated by Google’s web email service, or are the decreasing as people transition to Gmail? Is it reasonable to believe all web-based email services are enjoying the same kind of user explosion or is it more accurate to think people are leaving one service for another? Could the explosion of Android users be the reason for Gmail’s increase, considering you have to have a Google account to get the full functionality out of your Android-powered phone?

    [Lead image courtesy]

  • Google Cloud Messaging for Android Saves Battery Life and Kills C2DM

    Between Google’s big announcements of the Nexus 7, Nexus Q, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and Sergey Brin’s crazy skydiving spectacle, its not improbable that you may have missed the news about Google’s new Cloud Messaging service for Android.

    Google Cloud Messaging for Android (GCM) is, according to the description on the Android developer website, “a service that helps developers send data from servers to their Android applications on Android devices.” The service can send a message of up to 4 kb to an application on an Android device, most often to tell the application to retrieve a larger set of data. GCM will now handle all queueing and delivery for messages to Android applications.

    GCM will be taking the place of Google’s previous mobile application service, Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM). A message on the help page for C2DM has announced that as of yesterday, June 26, C2DM has been officially deprecated in favor of GCM. C2DM is no longer accepting new users, though Google will be maintaining C2DM for “the short term.” Developers will have to use GCM in the future and move their existing applications that use C2DM over to GCM.

    GCM will feature several improvements over C2DM. First of all, there are no sign-up forms to use – developers simply obtain an API key from Google. Google claims the new service has no quotas and increases battery efficiency. GCM also supports multicast messages, multiple senders, and time-to-live messages. Developers can get started using GCM over at the API guide on Google’s Android developer website.

  • Google+ Gets Native Tablet App And Events Today [Google I/O]

    After the impressive Jelly Bean presentation, Google is not done. The company has switched gears to Google+ and the future of their social network. The first major announcement is that Google+ is launching a native app on tablets today.

    Google pushed out a redesigned Google+ app for iOS and Android over the past few weeks. Google said that many users complained about the lack of a native tablet app. A native Android tablet app will launch today to hopefully fix that complaint.

    The major improvements to the tablet app are a redesigned photo stream that puts Google+’s impressive photos front and center. The tablet app also pretty much replicates the desktop Hangout experience with all the features that people have come to expect from Google+’s signature feature.

    Google didn’t show off all the redesign but they said that they have completely revamped how people interact with Google+ on tablets. The company also announced that they are working on a native iPad app that should launch soon. The app will take advantage of the new iPad’s retina display.

    Google also announced that all the new features for Google+ on tablets will be coming to Android smartphones today. It will hit the iPhone at a later date, probably alongside the iPad app. Once again, both Android apps will be available today.

    Google kept the Google+ party train rolling by announcing Google+ Events. We heard some rumors on this a few weeks ago when Google+ had some source code that hinted at the application. Google+ Events promises to be more intimate than anything else because it’s only available to those who were invited.

    Unlike other Events applications, Google+ adds something interesting called Party Mode. This is Google+ Events during the actual party where people opt in. When they take pictures at the event, they will be notified after the event to upload those photos to the event. This will allow everybody who was at the party to see all the photos that were taken during the event. The post-party event will then arrange the photos by popularity and tags.

    With events, Google+ is getting the last big feature that many fans have wanted since launch. It remains to be seen if it will be a major contender with Facebook, but it’s looking more optimistic for now. Remember to grab the new Google+ app for tablets on Google Play.

    [Lead image: Engadget]

  • Google Announces Nexus 7, a Powerful 7-Inch Tablet

    The reveals from Google I/O just keep rolling out. Google has now announced its least-kept secret product announcement of the conference: the Nexus 7 tablet.

    The tablet has a screen that is 7-inches diagonally, the exact same size to a Kindle Fire. The screen resolution, though, is 1280 x 800, slightly higher than the Fire’s 1024 x 600. It weighs slightly less than the Fire at 340 grams (11.99 oz). Nexus 7 will be running on a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and features a 12-core GPU. It has all of the standard features that modern tablets should have, including a front-facing camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC support. Google also claims that the battery in the device will provide up to 9 hours of video playback and 300 hours of standby time.

    The device will come already running Google’s new mobile OS, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The catchphrase of Google’s announcement of the device is that Nexus 7 is “built for Google Play.” The tablet interface highlights content foremost, with surprising integration such as Google Translation inside of some news reader apps. Nexus 7 is also the first device that will ship with Mobile Chrome as the standard browser.

    The Nexus 7 will be priced at $199. Again, this is the same price as Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which is undoubtedly the device that Google hopes the Nexus 7 will compete with. Purchasing Google’s new tablet will provide users with a $25 credit for Google Play, a digital copy of “Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon,” movie, an eBook copy of the latest Jason Bourne novel, and some Conde Nast magazine subscriptions.

    The Nexus 7 is now available for pre-order through Google Play starting today, and will ship sometime in mid-July.

  • Google Announces Tools For Developers And Hardware Partners At I/O

    Jelly Bean is official and it looks glorious. Developers will no doubt want to get their hands on the new operating system to take advantage of all the new toys available to them. Google knows this and has already released an SDK alongside some new tools for their hardware partners.

    Up first is the Android 4.1 SDK and developers will be able to get their hands on it today via the Android developers site. With Jelly Bean coming out in mid-July, developers might not be able to get something big out by launch, but they can start making new apps right now. Being able to take advantage of all the new features like Voice Search, Google Now and the features yet to be announced.

    Google has always been good to developers so the SDK was expected. What wasn’t expected was the PDK (Platform Development Kit) for their hardware partners. Google hopes that this will allow their hardware partners to stay on top of all the new innovations in Android. Hardware developers like HTC, Samsung and others will be able to get a hold of a PDK well before the launch of a new Android OS to get a head start on developing their software to be integrated deeply with Android.

    With this, Google may help stem some of the Android fragmentation that has been hurting the market. When hardware manufacturers develop their software around the same PDK, it should make everything more consolidated and fluid for everybody. It’s a win-win for Google, developers, hardware manufacturers and consumers.

    Google is pushing Android hard today at I/O. We’ll keep you updated here with all the latest and greatest news about Android.

    [Lead image: Engadget]