Hasta La Gadget!

During the I/O event, Google detailed it’s new Events feature for Google+, but the company is also adding in a Party Mode. During events, lots of photos and pictures of various people are often taken, although they can fall by the wayside or even lost. Google’s Party Mode sends out photos the Events page as they’re taken, but it also automatically scans pictures for faces and tags them with your friend’s appropriately.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Samsung recently implemented a similar feature on the Galaxy S III called Buddy Photo Share, which detects your friends based on facial features. Facebook also recently purchased Face.com, a service with very similar facial scanning functionality. It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, as the feature is quite helpful for those wary of manually tagging photos, but it’s interesting to see Google jumping on the bandwagon.

After the Event is over, photos are collected and displayed in chronological order, with highlights being displayed at the top. While the primary use is to invite other friends on Google+, you can also send out email invites to those without an account. Events should be hitting Google+ today.

Google+ Events features mimic Galaxy S III is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s Project Glass has been one of the most anticipated and hyped projects to come out of Google in quite some time. After a rather epic demo the company finally gave us a slightly deeper look at the wearable computer of our (supposed) future. Inside is the usual set of components you’d expect inside any mobile phone. There’s a “powerful” CPU and “lots” of RAM (though, there was no mention of specifics) alongside an accelerometer, gyroscope and wireless radios for pulling in data. There’s a mic for voice commands, a speaker and a camera, which can also be controlled by the touchpad that lines the side of the wearable device. All of those components sit off to one side, though Google says they’re still well-balanced and actually lighter than some pairs of sunglasses. The tiny transparent display doesn’t actually sit directly in front of your eye. It’s slightly above your line of vision, so that it shouldn’t interfere with your normal life.

Sergey Brin had three different prototypes on stage — a light blue pair, a white pair and a black pair — indicating that personalization and style were concerns. And that’s a good thing since Glass is meant to be worn in public. Ultimately Google hopes that the project will be the next step in its quest to make information quickly and universally accessible. The ability to capture images from the first person perspective seems to be key to the device. In a new demo video, a new mother waxes about how hard it is to capture those perfect moments with her child. She “smiles at faces not devices” which makes sticking a D5 in the baby’s face a bad idea.

If you’re impatient and lucky enough to have been at IO (and live in the US), you can actually pre-order an Explorer Edition of the wearable computer for $1,500. The dev focused units will be shipping early next year. But, be warned, this is not a mass consumer item and will likely be more than a little rough around the edges.

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

Google’s Project Glass gets some more details originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week at Google I/O we’ve gotten our first glimpse at Google+ for tablets, shown as a lovely streaming beast that’s looking rather different from any stream we’ve seen before. This application works in landscape mode primarily – or it was designed to do so, anyway, and is made specifically so that you can stream video with hangouts, first of all. This update brings hangouts to the tablet and makes the interface just as simple and workable as the basic version in the desktop-based app.

This update has a brand new bit of notification, a brand new profile selection series, and a wholly upgraded interface that basically looks like more fun to use than the web-based version. Check back at SlashGear soon to get a full review of both the iPad and the Android version – out now! This version has of course also been introduced for the betterment of the Nexus 7 tablet as well.

iTunes Link for iPad
Google Play App Store link for Android tablets

Stick with us all week for all things Google I/O 2012 through our I/O 2012 and Android portals alike!

Google+ pushed to Android tablets and iPad is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google has announced the latest usage stats for Google+, the company’s social network rival to Facebook. According to Google’s Vic Gundotra, Google+ is seeing over 150m people using it every month, with half of those accessing it daily. Overall there are 250m registered users.

Those daily users are spending more than an hour on the site too, something Gundotra is particularly proud of. It’s not clear what the average use-time among all users every month is.

Google is also seeing more users access Google+ when mobile than from the desktop browser version. That echoes Facebook’s experience of mobile, which has seen greater-than-expected takeup of users coming via their phones.

Usage figures are contentious, of course, as Google automatically signs up many new users to Google+ when they register YouTube or Gmail, or auto-upgrade them. Facebook is currently seeing 526m daily users access its site.

150m access Google+ each month is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google+ just got a makeover very recently, but it was still very much oriented towards phones — that’s been solved as of today. The social networking app is now optimized for Android tablets and the iPad, with a whole new navigation system and Hangout video chats suited to bigger screens. The layout is landscape-friendly and, if you have a new iPad, will take advantage of every pixel on that Retina display. Android users can get the update today; iPad owners will have to wait for a release coming “soon.” Android phone owners are getting some of the benefits of the supersized interface in their own, more modest screen sizes as well.

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

Google+ on Android, iPad goes tablet-sized originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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