Hasta La Gadget!

Google didn’t touch on it during its keynote, but The New York Times‘ John Markoff has the story on one fairly unique feature of its new Nexus Q home media device: the base of the unit proudly boasts that it’s “Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.” That includes an unnamed company in the Midwest that manufactures the metal base and another in Southern California that makes the case, while the device itself was reportedly being assembled just last week at a large factory 15 minutes away from Google’s HQ. According to Google, it hopes that people will be willing to pay more for the device as a result ($299, if you missed it), but it has no plans to play up the “Made in the U.S.A.” angle in its marketing. Wired also has an in-depth piece of its own on the making of the device — you can find it linked below as well.

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

Google Nexus Q is ‘Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  The New York Times  | Email this | Comments

On stage at Google I/O, engineering director Chris Yerga announced a ton of new content coming to Google Play (formerly known as the Android Market). More »

Google has just announced a new feature for Google Play that’s sure to please anyone who’s sat through an app update that never seemed to end. It now offers what it calls “Smart App Updates,” which will let developers provide incremental updates to apps instead of forcing people to download a whole new APK for every minor update. On average, Google says those should be about a third the size of typical updates. What’s more, the company has also announced that it’s bringing added encryption measures to Android, which will let paid apps be encrypted with a device-specific key that makes them harder to rip and share. Both features will be supported on Android devices running Gingerbread or above.

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

Google brings incremental app updates, added encryption measures to Android originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Google just officially unveiled its next iteration for Android — Jelly Bean 4.1 — and now we’re getting to see the various “buttery” improvements the company’s worked into the OS. Hugo Barra, Director of Product Management, took to the I/O 2012 stage to detail the refinements introduced to its search integration. The entire experience has been redesigned from the ground-up with a fresher UI and a “faster, more natural” voice search ability. That refreshed interface borrows from the recently outed Knowledge Graph, displaying queries for weather, Wikipedia and restaurants in graphical card format. That same layout extends to voice search, now spoken by a much more human-sounding voice. You can also dismiss the cards with a simple swipe, exposing the full list of search results beneath.

But that’s not the whole story, the company’s also introducing Google now — a new form of search that ties your browsing and navigation histories together to anticipate your needs. In the demo, Barra showcased how the new system could help to calculate a user’s commute, replete with alternate route suggestions and even scheduling info, recommend nearby restaurants as they’re passed and keep users abreast of impending appointments with departure time recommendations. Excited for this next search-based step in Android? Then look for it to hit Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S and Xoom devices as part of the 4.1 update coming mid-July.

Keep up with the latest Google news by checking out our I/O keynote liveblog and event hub!

Continue reading Google Now revamps search integration in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Google Now revamps search integration in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

On stage at Google I/O, the company is showing off its newest features for Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which include a new keyboard with SwiftKey-like word prediction, and voice typing that works even when you’re offline. From the demo on stage it worked quickly without the annoying lag of waiting for the server to process your words we’ve experienced from voice control so far. There are 18 new input languages including Persian and Hindi, although offline voice dictation is US English only for now. Also mentioned on stage are new audio cues for blind users, and support for Braille. Check out our Google I/O 2012 live blog for all the details.

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

Android Jelly Bean input options include updated keyboard, offline voice dictation originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 12:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Google I/O liveblog  | Email this | Comments