Episode 148 – A Masculine Shade of Pink

By | May 21, 2013
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Google I/O

Show Notes

  • Happy Victoria Day to Our Canadian Friends
  • Google I/O was this week
  • In Other News
    • BiPartisan bill would force government to get a court order before seizing phone records. The bill would strike a part of the existing code that currently allows the government to demand phone records containing numbers dialed, call durations, and location data without a warrant.
    • Samsung agrees to review 16GB Samsung Galaxy S4 which only has 8GB of usable space to try and create additional space. A Nexus version of the phone will be released on June 26th.
    • Google Compute Engine is now available to everyone.
    • Germany says Google must block libelous words added via autocomplete.
    • Gmail, Drive and G+ Photos now share common 15GB storage.
  • Platform News
    • Google announces Android has reached 900 Million activations worldwide. Play has 48 billion app installs.
    • Google launches tool called Portable Native Client that allows for Native Client Chrome apps to be deployed to multiple hardware architectures.
    • To combat fragmentation, the Android Team made the code for the platform more layered, so if a vendor needs to make changes, they have a clean abstraction layer to do so without affecting the entire operating system. Gingerbread may still have a presence because it runs on lower memory devices.
    • Google doesn’t update Android, but puts more into the new Play Services. Play Services brings in all of Google’s APIs as an app, instead of in the OS, allowing for updates without manufacturer or carrier involvement. Google can slow the pace of Android versions while improving the platform at the same time with this approach.
    • Google Cloud Messaging now part of Play Services, adds persistent connections between developers’ own servers and Google’s, allowing a large number of messages to be sent out at once,  upstream messaging, so devices can push messages back to GCM, synchronized notifications, so users can dismiss notifications on one device, and have them dismiss on all other devices.
    • How data, cheap sensors and Android could be a game changer for rural farmers.
    • Google Wallet now integrated with Gmail allowing money to be sent as an attachment.
    • Google Wallet Instant Buy API that allows for checkout in as little as two clicks, allows apps to use their own payment processors without fee to Google.
    • Google announces Google Play Music All Access, Google Play for Education
    • Google Updates Developer Console, adds the ability to do alpha/beta tests/stage rollouts, a professional translation service, analytics, etc.
    • Big Theme of Google I/O was unification between Chrome and Android…sharing services, APIs and design cues.
    • New Google Now Cards add voice-activated reminders, music, TV shows, books, video games, and public transit.
    • Google announces conversational search, improvements in the Knowledge Graph.
    • Android Studio, an IDE built for Android.
  • App News

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:07 — 33.9MB)