Home News Google I/O 2013 – day 1

Google I/O 2013 – day 1

May 16, 2013

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Wow the first day of Google I/O’s conference just ended! Being the first day, it focused a lot on the new APIs, new web-related magic such as search, an entirely new Google+ with a lot of Google magic, Chrome and much, much simpler developer tools. So let’s get down to our long list of information in the three hours today!

Developer
When it comes to developers, there’s always the open possibilities of APIs and how open the entire ecosystem is – to see how malleable the entire ecosystem is to tailor it to your own liking. As Google made itself open, they also provide new APIs to provide great features to all users. Let’s get down to it in a very simplified form!

New APIs
- Maps
  - Fused location-based data mining – combined the location-related sensors together
- Activity recognizer – tells if you’re walking, driving or on a bike.
- Auto sign-in – all apps installed will be logged in for you, if you’re logged in on that website on your computer
- Google Cloud Messaging – allows you to send data between servers and Android devices
  - Supports persistant connection
  - Two-way communication
  - Synced notification – notifications read on one device will disappear on the other
- Gaming
  - Cross-platform
  - Cloud Save – synced gaming progress across all devices
  - Achievements
  - Leaderboard
  - Real-time multiplayer
Android Studio
- Has IntelliJ
  - Simplifying codes to make it easily readable
  - Live rendering of thumbnails and icons
Dev console
- Gives optimization tips
- Has built-in app translation service
  - Payments are done on Google Wallet
- Track referrals of users
  - Has usage metrics
- Reverse tracking
- Beta testing and staged rollout – offers sequential app testing to make sure it’s well received

Play Store and Play Music
Well then, it’s even about music. Who doesn’t love music, right? Google went out there and made Music and the Store even better, though the Play Store just got a new interface not long ago. Here’s the list of new things.

Store
- New tablet-specific interface
Music
- Introducing New Access
  - Has music discovery service
  - Has personalized recommendations
  - Adds Google’s song in the store to your own library
- $9.99 per month, has 30 days trial
  - Sign up before June 30th 2013 at $7.99

Chrome
Basically Chrome started off as a browser, evolved to beyond browser today. Nonetheless, it also evolved like all the other Google services and products. Amazingly though, Google featured Malaysia in specific about the country’s move on getting Chromebooks for each and every student on 4G connectivity, and talked about how it will help the education system. Hold your horses – we’ll have to settle for English as our language in mathematics and science if we’re ever going to “globalize” education.

Shall we jump in to the list?

Performance
- With WebGL, everything on Chrome is the same between devices
WebP – picture compression
- Supports all commonly used image file types
- Compresses considerably to a smaller size
WebM – video compression
- We talked about this earlier
- YouTube will be the first to use
  - Mobile data users will benefit most
New Google Play for education on the web
- Recommends educational apps by other educators
- Shares app to all students by a click
  - Shares books, links, YouTube videos and other things too
- Payment is charged under the school’s fund
Has Google Wallet integration for online shopping

Google+
Google+ made it to the prime time, yet rumours said Babel would be replacing a large part of Google+. I beg to differ, as there are now more reasons to convince people to use Google+!

New interface for computer, phone and tablet
- A Pinterest-like interface, where there are columns of posts
  - Dynamically sized
    - Photos and videos shared are bigger
    - Has nice animations such as flipping and popups for posting things
- Has recommended hashtags – recommends hashtag depending on your posts and photos
New Hangouts – standalone app, replaces Google Talk (explicitly stated on Play Store)
- Essentially Google Talk, the online instant messaging service
- Cross platform
- Shows animations of who’s in and out of the conversation
- Able to start a video conversation by one click
Photos
- Upgraded from 5GB to 15GB free for full resolution photos on WiFi Sync
- Uploads only the best pictures
- Has auto enhance – enhances the photo automatically
- Has Auto Awesome – mix and collage similar photos automatically for you

Google Search
Who knew Google would reinvent Search and Now too? The new Search and Now has three parts, must like how Google+ did. Let’s break it down!

Answer – gives statistical answers on graphs
Conversational search – search with voice a la Google Now by saying “Okay Google”
Anticipate – new cards
- Has reminders now

Google Maps
Something that we’ve all been waiting for since most of us have been frustrated by how impractical Google Maps became after the roads got a little more complex. Now, Google made everything simpler.

Grand Truth – map creator, make your own maps for that area
Personalized maps
- Makes places important to your as landmarks
Street View – views up the entire inside of a restaurant
- Picture can be submitted by users
3D-satellite view
Real time earth pictures
- Shows clouds and day/night too
New Google Maps for mobile
- New design and interface
- Integrated Zagat for recommendations
- Shows offers of restaurants and places
  - Can save for later or use them now
- Real time incident updates – shows real time feed of traffic and whatnot
  - Has reroute option on the go
- Has a new “surprise me” function

Wow, long list for a short 3 hours eh? A productive morning for them, an exciting night for me. Oh wait – I forgot to mention one particular thing.

The new Samsung Galaxy S IV has been crowned as a Nexus device and get all things Google – even software updates directly from Google. No information of the specs yet, so no one actually knows if it’s the quad-core Snapdragon or the octa-core Exynos version yet. As far as we know, it has LTE support, 16GB of storage (13GB usable, in contrast of Samsung’s 8GB) and is available for T-Mobile and AT&T only. No information on availability in other countries too, but in whichever way, the phone is fully unlocked and goes for a price of $649 (RM 1,949.27). Seems like a Google Nexus 4 is still a better choice.

Anyway, that’s all for today and check out the entire presentation slides at the gallery below!