Episode 102 – Google I/O Superepisode

Google I/O occurred, and there is lots of news…barely enough to fit into one hour.

Show Notes

• Next week’s episode, 103, will be on Sunday, July 8th at 9PM
• Guru goes rack..because once you go rack, you never go back.
• In Other News
  • Sunday was Canada Day. Happy Canada Day to our Canadian listeners
  • Wednesday is Independence Day in the United States. Happy Independence Day. 
  • Google launches Amazon EC2 rival, Google Compute, still in limited beta.
  • You can buy a special Google Glasses Developer Edition for only $1500
• Android 4.1 Jellybean
  • Samsung and HTC issue statements on Jellybean updates
  • USB Audio Output support, which will allow for new docks that support digital sound, the possibility of audio input for digital recording.
  • Project Butter – Designed to improve UI responsiveness – Triple Buffering in the Graphics Pipeline for more consistent rendering, 16ms vsync timing across all drawing and animation, touch events etc. Attempts to anticipate touch response, and boosts the CPU speed at each touch event. 
  • Enhanced Accessibility – new APIs for accessibility and related improvements
  • Bi-Directional Text Support, which should improve Hebrew and Arabic support. 
  • User installable keymaps allowing you to change the layout of keyboards. This may also work for custom buttons, like Vol +, Vol -, etc.
  • Expandable Notifications – expand and shrink notifications with a pinch, new embedded content, actions can now be embedded in a notification.
  • Selectively disable notifications on a per app basis
  • Automatically resizable widgets.
  • Simplified Task Navigation, allowing for better management of “Up” navigation. 
  • Transitions to Lights Out and Full Screen Modes 
  • Live Wallpaper Previews
  • Higher Res Contact Photos, up to 720×720. 
  • Apps can register for notification when new input devices are attached by bluetooth, USB, or other connection types, or query the capabilities of input devices, control vibrator services. 
  • Android Beam improvements
  • Wi-fi network service discovery using multicast DNS. 
  • Wi-Fi Direct improvements
  • Network Bandwidth Management, allowing apps to know if a network is metered and act accordingly.
  • Media codec access
  • Audio record triggering based on completion of a playback track.
  • Multi-channel audio over HDMI, and internal encoding/decoding of AAC 5.1
  • Audio preprocessing
  • Media Router provides mechanisms for deciding where to play media. Headphones, bluetooth, etc.
  • Browser improvements: Better HTML5 video, improved performance, Javascript, etc. 
  • Google Cloud Messaging replaces C2DM…improved push notifications
  • App Encryption, Google Play will help protect application assets by encrypting all paid apps with a device-specific key before they are delivered and stored on a device.
  • Smart App Updates – Delta APK…only deliver changed portions of APK, to reduce bandwidth
  • Google Play Services – OAuth authentication, Google+ Sign In, +1 button, Google+ History.
  • Face Unlock now can require blinking, to avoid people using a picture
  • Offline Dictation/voice input
• News from Google I/O
  • Android PDK Could Help Manufacturers Update Devices Faster – Could be given to hardware manufacturers 2-3 months before the code drops
• Platform News
  • Adobe to discontinue Flash for Android August 15th, will not support Android 4.1. 
  • Google Wallet to offer Save to Wallet functionality…save an offer from a website directly to your wallet. 
  • Google+ History allows apps to submit lists of history to a queue and manually post them to Google+, as opposed to automatically. Still no Write API.
  • Apple v. Samsung: US Judge grants Apple injunction on Galaxy Nexus.
  • Google Now is part of Voice Search, learns from you to predict what you want
  • Google Play now offers purchase of TV/movies.
  • Google Docs now has offline editing. 
  • Cyanogemod 9 RC1 now available for 37 devices
  • Google Plus now supports Events.
  • Google offers Nexus Q, expensive ball that can only by used with Android devices and Nexus 7, $200-250 7 inch Jellybean tablet.
  • Google Play website now allows for updates, viewing system apps, and uninstalls.
  • Android surpasses 400 million total activations, 1 million new activations per day
• App News
  • Mint to format app for 7 inch tablet and to adopt ICS/Holo Design. 
  • Google Analytics App for Android (Play Link)
  • Google Currents will become part of GAPPS.
  • Currents, Youtube, and Drive updated – Youtube now allows preloading of videos while on wifi. Drive now allows upload and download of all file types…
  • Swiftkey 3 is number one on Google Play. 
  • Netflix now supports Jellybean
  • Google Maps now supports offline caching.
  • Chrome for Android leaves beta.
  • Foursquare announces connected Apps for Android, allowing you to build your app into the Foursquare app.
• Developer’s Corner
  • Android SDK Revision 20 launched.
  • Jellybean offers Systrace, to improve app performance
  • Android Development adds Multi-Configuration Editing, a way to visualize your layout on multiple configuration at once. 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:15 — 49.7MB)