If there’s one thing I like about Google, it’s their capacity for continuous innovation. In April, we’ve brought to you details about the Google I/O annual developer conference to be held on May 10 and May 11, 2011 in San Francisco.
This morning, on May 10, 2011, the first day at Google I/O, the Android team, had quite a few interesting updates to share.
Google I/O on May 10, 2011
The excitement at I/O was palpable and Google, for the first time in the I/O history, streamed it all LIVE as it promised. For the first time, we could see what actually happens at these much-talked about events. With more than 5,000 participants from 60 different countries, and over 110 sessions, 261 speakers and 152 sandbox partners, this was bound to be the biggest event.
This year’s keynote presentations on the first day highlighted the opportunities for developers over two of the most important developer platforms, Android and Chrome.
100M Android activations & 400,000 new activations a day & 200K apps
At the I/O today, Google’s director of product management, Hugo Barra, revealed some interesting Android figures through a video of a 3D Android robot scaling a mountain of Android activations. It’s hard to believe that Android was launched just about two and half years ago, in just one country with one carrier. Today, it has grown to a stage where it has more than 100 million activated Android devices and 4.5 billion Android apps, and encompasses a wide range of services.
Summary of Android Announcements at Google I/O
Android was the hot topic of discussion and everything from Google Music and Movies in the Android Market, to Android @ Home, to Android Open Accessory Toolkit and more were talked about.
Google is laying the groundwork for a two-pronged OS assault that’s going to happen soon: Android OS anywhere and the Chrome OS everywhere.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich: One OS everywhere
This is the next (hopefully) mouth-watering Android OS version. With this, Google aims at offering a single operating system that works everywhere, on any device. Google is positioning Android not as a phone OS, but as an all-purpose scalable OS. This new version took the centre stage at Google I/O, and brings all the features of Honeycomb, including all the latest widgets, new launcher, holographic user interface etc.
Android has existed as an OS for phones, and recently tablets. This upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich release, expected to come out in the fourth quarter, will serve for both the phone and the tablet.
Music Beta by Google
Google officially announced the launch of ‘Music Beta,’ this morning at Google I/O and the best part is, this cloud music player is being rolled out to US users today itself.
With Music Beta, you can now add up to 20 thousand songs to an efficient music manager on the web and then sync them to your phone. While in beta, this service is ‘free.’ Music Beta’s killer feature as revealed by Google’s Paul Joyce, is the ‘Instant Mix,’ where you just have to select the song of your choice and the music manager creates a playlist for you, based on the songs that sound familiar. This is Google’s version of Genius playlists.
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Music Beta also caches music on your phone automatically, and you can select the playlists, artists and albums to download to your phone, to listen to them even when offline.
This is available by invitation, but if for some reason, you are not one of the lucky ones, you can request an invitation here.
Movies For Rent
The Android Market is going big and with Google adding ‘Movies’ for rent, you can choose from thousands of movies starting at $1.99. These movies can be watched across several Android devices. You can rent a movie from the Android Market on the web using your computer, and you can view it on your tablet or phone.
Android Open Accessory Kit
Extension of the Android platform beyond mobile has always been the intention of Google from the beginning. Now it’s putting this plan into action. If you’re a developer, the new Android Open Accessory Kit is for you. It helps you build new hardware accessories that work across all Android devices.
Android @ Home
Google previewed their latest initiative Android @ Home OS, which ties together home devices, allowing Android apps to find, connect and communicate with devices and appliances in your home. This is something like ZigBee uses, which is a short-range home automation wireless network.
A host of new services are being released in the future that push the Android@ Home framework further, like ‘Project Tungsten’ which is a wireless speaker system that can be synced through Android. It runs the Android OS and the Android @Home framework. Google showed an example where it was connected to home stereo system speakers, and is meant to offer you more control over playing back your music.
With so much going on, Google was really busy on the first day of the Google I/O developer conference. And if you’d rather listen to the actual keynote delivered by real people from day one, apart from reading about it, then watch this one hour video that takes you through every single announcement made by Google on May 10, 2011.
Tags: android, Google, Google I/O, music beta by Google
