Live from the Google I/O keynote

1 hr.

Rosa Golijan

Google I/O, the search engine giant's annual developer conference is taking place in San Francisco, California this week. The show kicks off today, with a keynote event, and I'm here to report live about all the things Google unveils.

The fun?started around 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET so keep your eyes glued to the screen for more info, review what we thought Google would announce today, or follow me on Twitter???I'm?@rosa?on there?? for my silly personal commentary.

Google's vice president of engineering,?Vic Gundotra, stepped on stage to start things off?and welcomed everyone to this year's Google I/O. He thanked everyone for being here and asked us to shut off our wireless hotspots, in order to keep everything running smoothly.

Hugo Barra, Google's?director of product management, took the stage almost right after that, to talk about some Android milestones. He explained that Android has seen over 400 million device activations. He added that over one million new Android devices are activated every day. (That's about 12 Android devices every second.)

Android Jelly Bean
The Google team didn't wait long to introduce folks to Jelly Bean aka Android 4.1.

Almost right away, the folks in attendance were ooh-ing and aah-ing as we saw how easily widgets can be rearranged in Jelly Bean, with everything resizing itself automatically to fit on the screen more neatly. But things got really loud in the conference center as we were shown that Jelly Bean will offer offline voice typing. (No more worrying about lousy reception affecting your handsfree typing.)

Other neat Jelly Bean features include the ability to quickly?swipe back to photos you've just taken, the option to pair devices with a tap (via NFC) to share photos and video, and?notifications?which can be expanded (so that you can view your inbox without actually leaving the notification screen, for example).

"It's like they're reinventing Siri," a fella near me muttered, to no one in particular, as Jelly Bean's Knowledge Graph integration was shown off. The feature allows your Android device to answer questions ??such as "which movies did Angelina Jolie star in?" ? or take certain commands, which involve searches, such as "show me?photos of tiny monkeys."

A tool called "Google Now" learns from your habits, your location, and your calendar to offer you information you might need. For example, if you are in an area you don't usually travel through, Google Now might suggest some restaurants. If you happen to be at home and traffic conditions are bad, you might be offered alternate directions. The more you use Google Now, the smarter and more?useful?it should get.

Google Android 4.1 is expected to roll out to some devices in mid-July.

Google Play
There are more than 600,000 apps in Google Play and Google has seen over 20 billion Android app installs, we were told.

So what's new?

Well, developers will now be able to offer Smart App Updates, to devices on Gingerbread and above. This means that users will only have to download changed parts of an app, rather than re-downloading the whole thing every time there's an update.

Google Play will now also offer movies and television shows for purchase, along with magazines. Google has partnered with various studios and publishers to offer this content.

Nexus 7
Looks like the rumors were true. Google's got a shiny new tablet, called the "Nexus 7." It has a 1280 x 800 HD display, a Tegra 3 processor, a 12-core GPU,?a front-facing camera, and more. It will run Google Android 4.1.

Google's team emphasized content consumption when it comes to Nexus 7. This tablet is "made for Google Play," we were told.

The Nexus 7 will start at $199 (this price will include a handful of movies and some magazines). The tablet can be ordered now and will start shipping mid-July.

Considering that Google Play will now include?significantly?more media, that the nexus 7 hardware is pretty darn solid sounding, and that the price is right ... I'd say that Amazon's Kindle Fire has some strong competition to deal with now.

We'll update this page as news hits...

Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts,?or circling her?on?Google+.

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