If Cardboard was Google’s way to democratize virtual reality, the company announced the next step to make it more accessible with Google Jump. Google Jump is made up of three parts: The first is the camera. Google provides free specs on how to build a 360-degree camera rig, including schematics for 3D-printing components. Bavor said the company knows not everyone will want to mill their own, so he also presented GoPro’s turn-key product, which uses an array of 16 cameras to shoot VR video. Google will give away plans and details on how to build your own stereoscopic VR rig this summer.
It’s not even June and already last year’s big subscription MMOs are heading to the free-to-play model. And as of this morning, sci-fi MMO “This fall will be an exciting time for
Last year, Android Lollipop gave Google’s operating system the visual makeover it so desperately needed. Now that the eye candy’s taken care of, Android M’s going to be all about bringing that same level of polish to the core Android user experience. Revealed Thursday at Speaking to the latter point are Android M’s pair of flagship new features: Android Pay and a standardized fingerprint API that brings a consistent biometric experience to the operating system. Both are obvious echoes of Apple’s Apple Pay and Touch ID, respectively, but they should still prove highly welcome to Android users.
Games, concerts, and other immersive virtual reality experiences—and many are available for free.
With teachers’ budgets barely able to provide No. 2 pencils for kids in some school districts, going on a field trip to Asia or Greece isn’t exactly in the cards. But it Expeditions is a complete kit—in a cardboard box, of course—with everything needed for a teacher to take kids up to the moon, beneath the ocean, or into a museum. That means phones for each student, and a tablet for the teacher to run the field trip. Using the tablet, the teacher controls the experience. If that day’s trip is to the American Museum of Natural History, all of the phones are synced and go there simultaneously.
Fear not, cord cutters: HBO’s standalone streaming service, Hang out with Daenerys and all of your other HBO faves, coming in June.
Not everyone enjoys the constant connectivity that First World users take for granted. So, for developing countries—and, possibly, the U.S.?—Google said it will allow many of its apps to be accessible offline. “Making the world’s information accessible to users everywhere has been at the heart of what Google does, right from the start,” said Jen Fitzpatrick, vice president of engineering, on stage at the Google I/O developer conference keynote on Thursday. “More and more people are getting a new smartphone, and for many of these people, it will be their very first computer,” Fitzpatrick said. She added that just six countries, including China, Mexico, and Brazil, will be responsible for 1.2 billion smartphone sales by 2016, but many of them lack pervasive Internet access. "These people will have a profound impact on mobile computing, both as users and as creators," Fitzpatrick continued. "So we’re thinking very carefully how we evolve our products, and our platforms, to address their particular needs.”
Kids love tablets and smartphones, but you can’t just hand over a tablet and let them go to town. They need help finding appropriate apps, games, and videos. That’s where you, the parent, comes in, and Google is making changes to the Google Play Store to make it easier. Announced Wednesday at the
Google’s making it easier for apps and websites to push you the content you want to see, when you want to see it, no matter which device you’re using. During the Google I/O 2015 keynote on Thursday, Google’s developer product group head Jason Titus announced that the company’s behind-the-scenes cloud messaging technology—which apps can already use to push notifications to Google users’ Android devices and Chrome browsers—now supports iOS devices as well. In other words, an app’s notification can reach you across all your devices using the single, central cloud messaging system—assuming you’re using the major platforms, at least. But more interestingly than that, cloud messaging has also been updated to allow developers to set up specific topics to receive (or not receive) notifications about. For example, when you subscribe to notifications from a news app, you can choose to be informed when there’s a hot new science or technology story, but skip acerbic political drama.
Google+ is beloved by photographers, both pros and amateurs, for its Google Photos sorts your images by people, places, and things, all without tags.
Anyone with a Gmail or Google Apps account can now try out Inbox is an overhaul of Gmail, giving you the ability to snooze, pin, and quickly swipe away emails. Many new features come as part of the update. For example, you'll be able to undo sent messages from your phone or the web version. You can also make delete the default option when swiping emails.
Google Now already uses contexts to decide what you need to know—you require different information at Disneyland than you would at home or at work, explained Aparna Chennapragada, Google’s director of product management, when introducing Now on Tap at the Google I/O keynote. Now on Tap works with more contexts, like the current app you’re using and what’s happening inside it. It’s best shown off in demos, and the demos at I/O were beyond impressive.
We all want more battery life. At the Google I/O keynote on Thursday, Dave Burke, VP of engineering for Android, announced that Android M would include two major features to help our devices last longer and be easier to charge. The first will be a new Android feature called Doze. Android devices can lose a lot of battery life by catering to apps’ insatiable need for updates. Doze will monitor whether you’re actively using your device. After a period of inactivity, Doze will dial back app activity to save battery life. “What we’re doing is trading off a little bit of app freshness for longer battery life,” Burke explained. He showed a performance chart comparing the same activity load on two Nexus 9 phones, one running Android Lollipop and the other running Android M. The Android M phone lasted up to twice as long in standby as its Lollipop counterpart.
Move over, Google Wallet. Watch out, Apple Pay. Google said Thursday at its Google I/O conference that it is launching a successor to Google Wallet, called Android Pay, for Android phones running KitKat and above. Android Pay will work with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, though not Sprint, apparently. The service will work with Android 4.4 KitKat on up, including the new Android M, and will launch about the same time Android M does, executives said. Android Pay will be simple and secure, promised Dave Burke, the vice president of engineering for Android at Google. All you’ll need to do is unlock your phone, place it near the NFC terminal at over 700,000 stores in the U.S., and that’s it. Supported stores will include Macy’s, Bloomingdales, McDonalds, Subway, and more. And you can use it to purchase physical items from online stores, too, via sites and apps like GrubHub, Orbitz, NewEgg, Uber, and more.
Fingerprint authentication is nothing new. Enterprise PCs have had it for years. Apple introduced Touch ID in the iPhone 5S in 2013. Sporadic Android phones have unlocked with your touch over the years as well, like the Motorola Atrix and recent Samsung Galaxy phones. But Android-based implementation of fingerprint recognition has never been centralized around a standard API—until Android M. The new fingerprint API in Android M brings many of the conveniences of Touch ID to Google’s platform. On Android M phones equipped with a fingerprint scanner, you’ll be able to unlock your device with a touch, as well as use your finger to authenticate purchases made in the Play Store or with
With Android M you’ll no longer have a long list of permissions to approve when installing an app. Google announced at its I/O conference Thursday that instead you’ll approve specific permissions when you go to use that feature inside the app. For example, if you try an action that wants to use the microphone, location, or the camera, you’ll get a popup asking you to approve that particular function. The permissions are also designed to be simpler for you to understand exactly what you’re saying, “yes” to. Android M is a developer preview, so we’re not likely to see a formal release until later this year.
Google I/O is the biggest event of the year for fans of Google's products. From Android to Chrome, Maps to Search, the company's All the biggest news drops during the keynote, starting at 9:30am on Thursday May 28. Google streams the keynote at its
