With I/O 2016 less than a month away, Google has updated the conference’s site with a full schedule of sessions and accompanying descriptions. There’s the usual kick-off keynote from Sundar Pichai and several sessions related to VR and specifically Project Tango.
Google I/O is coming up in just a couple of months, and Google recently launched their I/O 2016 site with a really cool countdown clock. And while it may not be as strictly Material Design-inspired as the one from last year (might I say the new one even reminds me a little of iOS?), I think it’s a really nice looking design. Now, you can get an unofficial I/O 2016 watch face featuring the same font as the new countdown clock…
We told you last week that registration for Google’s 2016 I/O developer conference opened up to the public, and now it appears those that entered the drawing are receiving acceptance and denial emails. The lucky lottery entrants that have been accepted this time around, though, are apparently getting an error preventing them from registering…
In January, Sundar Pichai announced that Google I/O would kick off May 18 in the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. The I/O 16 website is now up, with registration beginning at 9AM PST on March 8 and ending on March 10 at 5 PM.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has shared that Google I/O 2016 will happen between May 18-20th in Mountain View this year. This is one of the earlier Google I/O announcements to date and is notably in Mountain View versus the usual Moscone venue in San Francisco.
We first heard about Google’s “Designed for Families” Play Store program in mid-May, and Google officially announced that it would be adding new family-focused features to the Play Store at Google I/O 2015. Now, a new section labeled as “New Family Fun” is popping up on the Play Store, featuring the friendly star mascot, iconic character categories, and more…
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We told you yesterday that Google’s ATAP team is working on a couple new projects dubbed Soli and Jacquard, and today the group of self-proclaimed “pirates” came out to officially announce (and demo) them both on stage at their much-anticipated Google I/O session. They’re both about reimagining how we interact with technology, but both projects attempt to do so in different ways…
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Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke’s presentation on Android M yesterday saw quite a few huge new additions coming to the OS from granular app permissions to improved battery standby management and, of course, Android Pay (check out our roundup). But one thing that might have got lost in the noise for some of you was Google’s newfound embrace of the USB Type-C standard and what it will actually do for you in practice.
USB Type-C is both flippable and bi-directional. That first attribute means that you won’t have to fiddle in the dark with plugging the USB cable connector into your phone the right-side up, because there isn’t a right-side up with Type-C.
More interesting, though, is the bi-directional ability of USB Type-C and Android M’s new interface support for it. What this means in theory is that, while this wouldn’t be practical, you could connect your Android phone to your laptop and charge your laptop with your phone instead of the other way around. You can also send files in either direction as was obviously possible before, but the new interface you see above for managing all these abilities in one place looks quite convenient.
Finally as you might be able to make out from the image above, Google is ready to welcome in more musicians with the warm embrace of MIDI support. This is big because while because 5.0 Lollipop brought support for some audio devices like USB microphones and amplifiers, it left out a lot of musical instruments that use the MIDI standard to send data back and forth between other devices. Maybe this will encourage more musicians and music app developers to consider Android again.
There was a lot to digest in today’s Google I/O keynote but one small, interesting new behavior change of note going into Android M is a new text selection floating toolbar, as you can see in the GIF above.
Whereas in the past primary actions of Cut, Copy, Paste, as well as other app-specific actions related to selecting text would probably be saved for a contextual action bar (an example of which is below), developers who want to keep their apps up-to-date with platform changes will now utilize this new toolbar which appears just above the text selection area. As you can see above, pressing the More icon will reveal a secondary menu where developers can add their own extra actions; the company in its design documents provides the example of Share, Search, and Translate actions appearing within the secondary menu in Gmail.
Another interesting system behavior change in Android M is a battery management tool called “Doze,” which we detailed in our Android M roundup, that disables most background activities when the OS detects that the device has gone unused for an extended period of time. The company says this has resulted in upwards of 2x longer standby time for Android devices running M versus those running Lollipop.
Besides improvements in surfacing family-friendly content, Google’s Play Store is getting a couple updates that developers in particular should be happy about, which we learned about today at the company’s I/O conference.
As part of its Google I/O developer conference today, Google is offering some updates on its Google Places API for iOS as well as future updates arriving for its Maps app.
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCo3zZ0P4vU]
After first launching its new Inbox app as an alternative email experience to its main Gmail service last year, Google today announced that Inbox is now open to all sans the original invite system while it also introduces a number of new features for the service.
As for features, Google highlighted a new “Trip Bundles” feature that keeps emails related to travel in one place, and improved controls for things like Undo Send, Signatures, and Swipe to Delete:
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Google’s annual I/O developers’ conference kicks off in San Francisco, California in just about an hour, and the Mountain View company is providing a livestream of the event to keep you in the loop on what’s being announced. As is always the case with the first day of I/O, we’re expecting a lot of announcements from the two-hour (plus) keynote, including Android ‘M’, a new Chromecast, some surprises from Google’s ATAP, Cardboard, and more.
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I’ve already grabbed my badge and checked in for Google I/O 2015, so I thought I would grab a few shots to give you a little bit of an idea of what the atmosphere is like. I haven’t had any celebrity sitings, but I have seen several dozen anxious Android developers waiting for 9:30 AM tomorrow for the keynote to get started. Check out our gallery below…
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Stephen and I are off to Google I/O 2015 this week (the first time we’ve sent 2 people – for double the coverage!) but we wanted to preview what we we’re excited about this week. I’d run through the list of expectations but Chance already made 90% of the list when the sessions were launched. Go check it out. Here’s what I’ve been hearing…
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Prior to this week’s Google I/O developers’ conference in San Francisco, Google’s Vice President of Engineering for Android Hiroshi Lockheimer sat down with Fast Company to talk about the current state (and the future) of Android, Chrome OS, and more. Lockheimer confirmed the upcoming announcement of Android M, and offered much insight into where Android came from, where it’s going, and how it’s evolving in a world with more and more interconnected devices…
In just a couple of days, Google will—almost surely—be taking the wraps off the latest version of its mobile operating system, Android “M”. It’s rumored to be codenamed “Macadamia Nut Cookie” thanks to the latest versions of the Android Open Source Project sporting scattered mentions of “MNC,” and new information from Android Police suggests that this year Google is going to put a big focus on battery and RAM performance…
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Rumors that Google has big plans for virtual reality seem to be gathering pace. After yesterday learning that the lead designer of Google Search is now heading up Google Cardboard, another engineer believed to be working on the projected has hinted at an announcement at Google I/O …
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Google has begun sending out an email to developers, asking them to opt-in their family-friendly apps and games to the Designed for Families program. The Mountain View company first started inviting developers to take part in the initiative about a month ago, aiming to increase discoverability of family- and kid-friendly apps on the Play Store…
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We’re nearing the one year anniversary mark of the first generation Moto 360’s original unveiling, and it’s about time for Motorola to show us what it has up its sleeves for the next iteration of its famed circular smartwatch—if said next generation does exist in the first place. If a newly surfaced filing from Bluetooth SIG is to be believed (via droid-life), the product does indeed appear to have a successor, and it might be closer than we think…
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Update: Google has now updated the I/O app in the Play Store with the changes below ahead of May 28 – May 29 event. Grab it on the Play Store now.
The Google I/O app has received a few major updates over the last few years, each one landing right around the time of Google’s huge developers’ conference taking place in San Francisco, California. Now, some users who joined the beta channel of the Google I/O app last year have started receiving the update to its Google I/O 2015 version, and it packs a nifty super-Material redesign…
According to a report this afternoon from Bloomberg, “people familiar with the matter” have said that Google is preparing to give Android users more control over what data gets shared with their apps. Users will, at some point in the near future, have “more detailed choices” over which pieces of their information that apps have access to:
Google’s Android operating system is set to give users more detailed choices over what apps can access, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter remains private. That could include photos, contacts or location. An announcement of the change, which would put Android closer in line with Apple Inc.’s iOS, is expected for Google’s developer’s conference in San Francisco this month, one of the people said.
More than likely, this is a feature that Google will be announcing alongside Android “M” at this year’s Google I/O conference which is set to kick off at the end of the month.
It looks like all hope is not lost if you applied for a ticket to Google I/O in March and initially got rejected. Scattered reports have started streaming in that some users who were rejected at first have now begun receiving emails inviting them to purchase a ticket to the event…
Google has today updated the Google I/O 2015 website with a bunch of really useful information. As of right now, you can view the entire schedule of events and sessions for I/O 2015, set up your own personal schedule for the event, get reminders for when sessions are happening, and more…
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