Google I/O in a Nutshell: All the News You Might Have Missed. Google I/O 2011 has officially ended, so here's a quick "all killer, no filler" recap of everything you need to know that happened at the conference this year. The event was full of announcements, including big pieces of Android news, updates on Google TV, announcements for the super-slick Chromebook, and perhaps most significant of all, the official launch of Google Music. And it wasn't all consumer app news. Believe it or not, this developer conference also brought actual news for developers, too. We'll wrap it all up for you right here: Google Music Launched What you need to know: Google's music service lets you upload any music files you have — including iTunes libraries and playlists — to the cloud.
But you can't buy music through Google Music — not yet, at least. Chromebooks Are Coming What you need to know: Google Chromebooks, elegant little netbooks that run Chrome OS, are becoming commercially available beginning June 15. Google TV's Getting More Apps A New Version of Honeycomb. Fossil Meta Watch wrists-on at Google I/O (video) Google +1 for Websites Nears Launch. I/O 2011. Google I/O Live Blog: Google Launches Music, Movies, "Ice Cream Sandwich" & More. Google's yearly developer conference, Google I/O, begins today in San Francisco and we're live at the event to bring you the opening keynote. The speculation thus far has been that Google will finally unveil the long-awaited Google Music offering, which has indeed just gone live on the Web. Stay tuned for more details as they arrive.
The keynote begins at 9 a.m. PST. Currently, on stage there is an exercise bike and what looks like several small podiums with speakers. 9:00: Vic Gundotra takes the stage and says we're going to reminisce. 2008 was the first Google I/O conference and focused on client connectivity and the cloud. "Connectivity was about to explode...and allow us to build cloud based services we could have hardly dreamed of two years ago.
" Last year, Google focused on Android. 9:05: Hugo Barra takes the stage. Google has activated over 100 million Android devices worldwide. 36 OEMs, 215 carriers, 450,00 Android developers all over the world. 310 Android devices in 112 countries. Live from Google I/O 2011's opening keynote! We're camped out on the corner of Howard and 3rd, but Google I/O 2011's opening keynote hasn't started quite yet. You're still in the right place, though -- bookmark this very page and return at the time listed below for blow-by-blow coverage as it happens. 06:00AM - Hawaii09:00AM - Pacific10:00AM - Mountain11:00AM - Central12:00PM - Eastern05:00PM - London06:00PM - Paris08:00PM - Moscow01:00AM - Perth (May 11th)01:00AM - Shenzhen (May 11th)02:00AM - Tokyo (May 11th)04:00AM - Sydney (May 11th) 12:55PM And that's a wrap, folks!
Pretty intense keynote for the opening day, and we're promised even more tomorrow. We'll be here bringing it to you live, of course! 12:53PM By the way, it's 8.6mm and 565g, and Honeycomb 3.1 will hit "over the next couple of weeks. " That means that it should be live by the time it starts shipping to consumers, though there's no indication of a price. 12:51PM Curiously enough, Google just mentioned Ice Cream Sandwich again without a version number. 12:32PM Uh oh!
Music. Google to announce Chrome OS laptop rentals for $20 a month. Google is set to unveil a Chrome laptop “student package” tomorrow at its I/O developer conference for $20 a month, an unnamed senior Google executive tells Forbes. If true, the move has the potential to completely reshape the way consumers adopt computers, and it will also serve as a not-so-subtle Trojan horse for Google’s online offerings. The $20 monthly fee will cover both hardware and online services for the laptops, which run Google’s web-centric Chrome OS software, the executive said. It will likely serve as a precursor to an enterprise Chrome laptop offering, wherein businesses pay a slight premium over their $50 annual fee for Google Apps (the company’s web-based Microsoft Office competitor suite).
The Chrome laptops will likely feature the same mobile broadband capabilities as the CR-48. That computer shipped with built-in 3G access and included 100 megabytes of monthly internet free for two years. Android@Home: Crazy Cool Tech Or Scary Concept? Call it the Androidification of our homes. If you like the Android operating system in your hands, on the go, on your lap, well then Google would love for you have it on your exercise bike, microwave, vacuum cleaner and every other appliance in your house as well. The company showcased a number of those ideas today during its keynote presentation at Google I/O.
The thinking behind this is ambitious, and the promise is big. Huge, in fact. Imagine a cohesively networked home that can seamlessly interact with your mobile device. Your device could measure your level of activity throughout the day, and tailor a nutrition and exercise regimen using that data. What about adding a calendar event for that hot date? Imagine more Android-enabled appliances and electronics, or an Android Market for the home, with programs that can give you a ridiculous amount of automation and convenience features. But it’s that last part that’s enough to elicit a “yikes” for some people. First, the U.S. Google I/O for Developers: New App Engine, Go Runtime & Eclipse Plugin.
Although Google's developer conference was awash with consumer product news, the company actually made some announcements relevant to developers. App Engine is being graduated from a preview to version 1.5 this summer. The new version offers Backends, better Task Queues and an experimental runtime for Go, Google's homebrewed programming language. In addition to the App Engine upgrade, Google also unveiled a Google Plugin for Eclipse, the popular IDE. Within App Engine, Backends for both Python and Java will support apps with long running requirements and high memory processes, such as custom search engines. With the new Go runtime, Go apps will be compiled to native code, and the compiling is optimized to be super fast. For Eclipse users, the Google Plugin for Eclipse will help Java devs more easily set up their apps in the Google cloud.
Python announcements regarding support for more current version should be coming "real soon," according to a Google rep at I/O.