Hasta La Gadget!

Google looks to be getting serious in its quest for online storage, announcing some new features at the Day 2 I/O keynote that will take on competitors like Dropbox and Evernote. One of those is in the introduction of Google Drive SDK 2.0, which will allow app developers for Android and iOS to implement Drive functionality straight into their mobile apps.

Developers will be able to implement uploads, downloads, or simple file edits within their own applications by leveraging the SDK. It mimics similar functionality that Dropbox has been offering developers for some time. On top of that, the programming interface has seen some tweaks, now coping with conversions and revisions.

Google Drive SDK 2.0 is up for download now, and some apps have already been updated to take use of the new functionality. Google says that others will be updated in due course. If you’re a developer and want the full details as well as the SDK, head on over here.

Google releases Drive SDK 2.0 is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has added offline editing to Google Docs, allowing users to open and edit their text, spreadsheet and other documents even when they don’t have an internet connection. Announced today at the second Google IO keynote, the new offline Google Docs system uses local caching to save the latest copy of any documents changed, automatically synchronizing whenever a connection is restored.

Offline functionality has been something of a theme at IO this week. Google Maps has been updated to support selective offline use, allowing Android device owners to select a portion of the map to locally cache. Meanwhile, Jelly Bean supports offline voice typing for Android phones and tablets.

The connection-free editing should also improve the user-experience of Chromebooks, which so far have only been fully functional when they’re online. Google added the ability to locally cache documents for reading on Chromebooks several months ago, but not editing.

Offline Google Docs will be available today, the search company says. You can sign up for a free account here, as part of Google Drive.

Google Docs offline editing added today is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Windows, Mac and Android users are no longer alone in their access to Google Drive’s online repository. Now iOS and Chrome OS users can install a client and pull down their data and docs (though, the promised Linux client was nowhere to be seen at IO). The iOS app has all the features that make Drive drive great on Android, including OCR and picture recognition. As part of the demo, Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management for Google Apps, showed off the apps ability to decipher and index text from receipts he had taken a picture of. Perhaps more impressive though, was his ability to simply type “pyramids” and have his vacation snapshots pop up. There was no metadata attached to the images identifying them as the pyramids in Egypt, Google was able to recognize the landmarks by analyzing the photos.

Obviously, Drive and seamless integration with it is key to Chrome OS’s success. Now the browser-based OS finally has a native Drive client allowing you to quickly sync and access your data on the lightweight Linux machines. The ability to sync files with Chrome OS is great, but more importantly, an update to the web service has now made offline editing available — perhaps the most requested feature. Now with offline access ironed out and all the major desktop and mobile OSes under it’s belt Drive may actually be ready to challenge peripheral competitors like Dropbox.

Check out our full coverage of Google I/O 2012’s developer conference at our event hub!

Google Drive client comes to Chrome OS and iOS, available today originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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