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Comment: Google Duplex isn’t the only thing announced at I/O that has societal implications

Google Assistant John Legend

In the days since I/O 2018, critique has primarily been lobbied against Google Duplex. There are problems with the feature, but to me — at least — it’s clear that the company thought about some of the societal impacts associated with a nearly indistinguishable human voice out in the world.

However, I think another feature Google announced deserves a similar level of criticism due to its broad impact. Enter John Legend.


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Google shares Pocket Casts, Lyft, and other partners’ early Material Theming concepts

Google officially unveiled Material Themes at I/O 2018 after weeks of various Android and web apps slowly revealing new aspects. During the keynotes, first-party apps, like Photos, showed off the new design and now Google is revealing “partner studies” that explore how others could adopt it.


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Hands on: Building with the Labo-like NXP i.MX7D dev kit for Android Things [Gallery]

Google announced on Monday that Android Things is finally ready for production, and to back that up they’re sending all Google I/O attendees home with a nifty dev kit to get started. Google also sent the press home with the same kit for us to check out and tinker with, and tinker we did. We put it together, booted it up, and took some shots so you can see everything in the box…


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Google gives Android TV a ‘renewed focus,’ promises updates and better performance

Android TV

Android TV has been around for quite a while, but until recently, the platform hadn’t really been all that popular. In just the past year, Google has seen a lot of growth, but that hasn’t come directly from consumers. Aside from a massive lack of hardware offerings, that’s been due to Google’s apparent lack of interest in the platform. Now, though, Google is giving Android TV a “renewed focus.”


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Material Theme Engine makes it easy for developers to implement Google’s evolved Material Design

Leading up to I/O ’18, we saw Google revamp a lot of its apps and services with an updated Material Design. We’ve been hearing about something called “Material Design 2” for quite some time, so we assumed that would be the gist of Google’s announcement at I/O.

But instead, Google has today announced something called Material Theme Engine, which is basically a plugin to help designers implement Material Design in their apps.


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Google Lens integrating w/ camera apps, adding smart text selection & real-time results

Announced last year at I/O, Google is announcing a number of new capabilities during this year’s keynote. The visual search feature is getting a new look and being integrated with third-party camera apps from OEMs. Meanwhile, it is adding three new features, the most notable being real-time answers.


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