We’re live at day two of I/O and the theme of this keynote is all about “Going Google.” With this focus on Mountain View’s various cloud-based apps, Clay Bavar, Director of Product Management for Google Apps, announced that Docs will now work offline for editing. In the onstage demo, Bavar was able to log into several devices, including a Nexus phone and tablet, to interact and collaborate in real-time on a document. Thanks to the smooth syncing at work, edits made from each device showed up as they were being entered, keystroke-by-keystroke. Now, those edits can also be created without a working internet connection and synced up later. You won’t have to wait long, either, to take this offline mode for a test spin, as the feature will be enabled later in the day, with that functionality “coming soon” for presentations and spreadsheets. Check out the official PR after the break.
Check out our full coverage of Google I/O 2012’s developer conference at our event hub!
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!
This week the Google Chrome browser has been introduced for the iPhone. The Chrome browser started up Google I/O’s 2012 keynote on the second day of the event, with Chrome as a browser connecting with Chrome as a browser as an operating system being shown to connect across any number of devices. Of course we’d seen much of this in the past as Google Chrome has been connected in this Google accounts way for several months. This browser is able to rather able, as its been demonstrated today, to work from a laptop to a Chromebook to a smartphone to a Nexus 7 tablet and back.
The extreme speed at which the browser works back and forth between the operating system and the browser was shown off on stage in real time. The Chrome browser was shown off on two Apple systems as well – both the iPhone and the iPad.
The Chrome browser was demonstrated onstage with both the iPhone 4/4S as well as the iPad 3 with no less than the same syncing powers as the rest of the device universe. Now not only will you be able to work with Chrome on your Android and desktop systems, you’ll be good to go with iOS as well. Check it out on the iTunes store today!
Also check out the timeline below to see all sorts of recent Chrome news, and hit up our I/O 2012 portal for more news from Google’s developer conference all week!
Google just did what many thought wasn’t possible — it just put mobile Chrome on iOS. Both iPad and iPhone users will get the app, either with incognito browsing, syncing and that unique tabbed browsing interface intact. The company hasn’t said what’s changed versus the Android build, but it’s likely the main differences are matters of integration — Apple’s app rules won’t let Google bring in its own WebKit rendering engine tweaks or change the default browser. Whether or not that switch is a dealbreaker, Chrome should be available later today in the App Store for those who want a break from the Safari norm.
Check out our full coverage of Google I/O 2012’s developer conference at our event hub!
Update: No download just yet, but Google is teasing us with a video that you can find after the break. The iOS port shows up at the 43-second mark.
Update 2: It’s available! Hit the source link to get your copy.
Google announced at day two of I/O that Chrome is finally coming to the iPhone and iPad. If you’ve been waiting for the browser you’ll be glad to know you can download it this afternoon. More »
The second keynote of Google I/O 2012 has kicked off, with the news that the Chrome browser is now up to 310 million active users, compared to 160m back at IO 2011. The browser has had a significant surge in adoption – Google counted 70m active users back in 2010 – and the search giant claims that by all the metrics it can find, Chrome is the most popular web browser globally.
Chrome isn’t just widely adopted, it’s saving time and energy according to Sundar Pichai of Chrome and Apps for Google. In fact, the omnibar search box – which allows users to search or put addresses into the same box – apparently saves 13 years of human life every single day.
Meanwhile, there’s 60 billion words typed into Chrome every day, and 1TB of data downloaded. Google also demonstrated sync between Chrome on different devices, something else that the company says will save user-time.
Last year at Google IO, the company was bragging that it had racked up 160 million Chrome users. Since then, that number has nearly doubled, with the company claiming 310 million active users. Those consumers download roughly 1TB of data per day and type about 60 billion words according to Mountain View’s crack team of analysts. The company even claims that 13 years of time have been saved thanks to the magic of Chrome’s speedy rendering engine.
Check out our full coverage of Google I/O 2012’s developer conference at our event hub!
We’re not done. Not. Even. Close. The day one keynote may have been full of fun but we’re expecting even more from day two. What sort of things? Well, why don’t you tune in and find out, right here at the time below.
Jelly Bean, a Nexus tablet, even skydiving Google Glass: the Google IO keynote very nearly had it all, but the company’s decision to leave Google TV off the agenda in favor of the Nexus Q was a low. The zinc Epcot of Android was billed as a communal media player, and its presence on stage when Google TV was conspicuously absent undoubtedly led to confusion as to what its exact purpose was, especially given streaming favorites like Netflix and Hulu are missing. Google TV had been, in the run-up to IO, one of the topics most people expected to see covered, and its omission does not bode well.
At $299 the Nexus Q is, as many have observed, not a cheap device, and while Google has made much of its “designed and made in the USA” credentials, it’s a strategy that’s at odds with the “cut the costs” approach of the Nexus 7. If Google’s target is Sonos – admittedly audio-only – then it failed to demonstrate how a multi-zone Nexus Q setup would play out. If it’s a challenge to Apple TV, however, then it’s difficult to see how Google can justify charging three times the amount.
The biggest frustration is that the Nexus Q is already obviously capable of much, much more. Within hours of having access to the first units, Android developers have already managed to get games running, turning the Q into an open-source console of sorts. That’s just the start of things, no doubt; efforts are already underway to unlock what is, behind the curvaceous shell, a Galaxy Nexus without a display.
Google Nexus Q hands-on:
Now, it would’ve been premature for Google to reveal all of its future plans for the Nexus Q, but it did the device a disservice with a presentation that failed to dress the orb in suitable context. The Jelly Bean message was clear: the OS runs faster and smoother than Ice Cream Sandwich, brings a voice search Siri alternative, and tackles fragmentation with the promise of earlier access for new versions for manufacturers. The Nexus 7 news left nobody in any confusion as to the tablet’s selling points; even the Google Glass announcement, with exact details still in relatively short supply, did what it needed to.
For the Nexus Q, though, we had a fancy video in the style of Apple’s promos, an awkward and overly-long demonstration of how several people can manage a shared playlist, and little in the way of context. Even just promising “like Nexus phones, there’s hugely broad potential for the Nexus Q” could’ve been enough to prevent most of the post-keynote confusion.
Instead, the functionality and longer-term intentions were left vague, and without any mention of Google TV it was difficult to see how the two products are meant to sit together. That’s disappointing, after Google worked so hard to improve the latest iteration of its smart TV product; particularly if you’re Sony and Vizio, and announced second-gen Google TV boxes this week in the run-up to Google’s event. Hopefully, it means Google TV will have its moment in the spotlight today, albeit late, at the second day IO keynote.
In 2008, when the Eee PC was revolutionizing the computing world and driving every manufacturer to make cheaper and smaller laptops, Sony washed its hands of the whole thing. The “race to the bottom,” the company said, would profoundly impact the industry, killing profit margins and flooding the market with cheap, terrible machines. Sony was wrong, its stance lasting about a year before joining the competition with its own VAIO W.
Four years on we’re buying better laptops than ever before and, with the netbook class now more or less dead, that downward competition seems to have shifted to the tablet front. A flood of cheap, truly awful slates preceded Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the $200 tablet from a major brand that looks to have been the proper catalyst in plunging prices. The latest challenger to enter the competition is ASUS, partnering with Google to create the first Nexus tablet, a device that not only will amaze with its MSRP, but with its quality. It’s called the Nexus 7, it too is $200, and it’s better than Amazon’s offering in every way but one.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
