Google I/O 2012: everything you need to know

One of Google's surprises yesterday was the Nexus Q media streamer, a product that sees the company expanding into the living room with its own branded hardware. The Nexus Q differs from competing devices in that it only serves as a conduit. It has no UI of its own; you control the Q with your Android smartphone or tablet, and the sphere then streams audio and video content down from the Google Play Store (it can also be used to route YouTube content to your television). We spent some time with the device today, and while there are some nice stylistic touches, we did find the device to be somewhat lacking in its feature set and ease of use.

The Q comes in a two-piece cardboard box, packed with a thin instruction pamphlet and a power cable. The device itself is smaller than you might expect from the photographs — it's about the size of a grapefruit — with a heavy weighted base. Its matte black finish is attractive, but the Q picks up oils from your fingers all too easily. With the top of the sphere essentially one giant volume control knob, we could see this quickly becoming an annoyance.

Google had a lot to announce at its I/O keynote yesterday, but if it's all been too much to take in then this could be a solution of sorts — a guidebook to the new Nexus 7 tablet on Google Play. The 84-page tome isn't just restricted to those interested in the Asus slate, however, as it acts as an introductory guide to the Android platform and Jelly Bean in particular.

Now, admittedly you'll probably want an Android device to download and read the book in the first place, but even experienced users might find it useful to delve into the new Jelly Bean features. For others considering the Nexus 7 as their first Android device, it might make for an appropriate way to test the device's capabilities as a reader. It's available now in countries where books are sold on Google Play.

One of the many rumors we heard about Google Drive before the cloud storage service's eventual release was support for third-party app integration via a software development kit. That didn't come to pass in the first version of the SDK, but that all changes today with version 2 — developers can now integrate Google Drive into their apps for both Android and iOS devices. Apps developed with the new SDK will let users view, edit, and upload files with Google Drive.

Until now Dropbox has been the most visible player in this space, with Apple's recent introduction of iCloud also gaining some support. Google has also given a few new compatibility features to web apps, including an embeddable sharing component and the ability to open Drive files in any app that works with the service's exportable formats.

HTML5 game development could be one of the hot topics of Google I/O. Yesterday we got word of Strike Fortress, a technically impressive multiplayer title from EA, and today a new team has announced a set of development tools designed to help create HTML5 games quickly and easily. PlayCanvas, started by former developers from Sony and Activision, provides a collaborative environment specifically for building browser-based 3D games.

The drawback right now is that PlayCanvas games currently won't work in mobile browsers like Chrome for Android and Safari on iOS. This is because those browsers don't yet support WebGL, though the team expects mobile support to "improve in the coming months." The current demos are definitely on the simple side, but the PlayCanvas team says its combination of a "professional standard" 3D engine, design tools, and workflow features will make it an attractive platform for development.

Facebook users are used to having third-party applications and services post to their stream, and now Google+ is getting its strategy in place to do the same thing. VentureBeat spoke with Google's Louis Gray who explained that the History API will allow third-party services like Twitter and Foursquare to privately save events, known as "moments," to a given user's Google+ profile, at which point they can choose to share the events on their Google+ profile. While the History API will help bring Google+ to parity with Facebook's frictionless sharing, it could also allow Google+ users to help populate their profiles, no doubt encouraging users to stick with the service which has struggled to catch on with mainstream users. The History API is available only as part of the Google+ developer preview at the moment, giving developers time to prepare their sites and applications to take advantage of the feature.

Here's another intriguing project to come out of this year's Google I/O: the company has announced Web Lab, a series of installations that will let visitors "see the magic of the web brought to life through five Chrome experiments." The installations will be on display at the Science Museum in London for a year, but you won't have to be in the UK to participate — you can interact with them from wherever you are at the Chrome Web Lab website. Installations include collaborative music-making, a way to see "where images on the web live," and a robot that translates uploaded images into pictures drawn in sand. The project is launching "in beta" this summer, but for now you can check out a teaser video below.

Remaining true to Google I/O tradition, those attending this week's event will receive a collection of loot, including a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.1 Jellybean, a Nexus Q, and a white version of the Asus Nexus 7, otherwise unavailable to the public. Unlike the model currently available for pre-order, which comes with a black textured backplate, developers and other attendees are receiving the Nexus 7 with a white finish on the rear panel. As far as we can tell, the device has no other unique characteristics and the packaging looks identical to the standard version. Of course, Asus may offer a white version in the future, but as it stands, it is available only to a select few.

How did Google and Asus manage to deliver a $199 Tegra 3 tablet like the Nexus 7? According to Nvidia Tegra boss Mike Rayfield, it's part of a concerted effort to drive down the cost of components. Nvidia's Kai program, which we revealed a few months ago, isn't just about using cheaper DDR3L memory and putting more technologies in the chip: Together with Asus and other device manufacturers, Nvidia is actively negotiating with suppliers to make $199 tablets far more common. "We went to all of our component manufacturers and said, 'we want to build this reference platform, we want to give people a good deal,'" and combined with what Rayfield characterized as a degradation in component prices over the past year, a number of companies have managed to achieve the magic $200 target.

So, what's the performance difference between a $200 Kai tablet like the Nexus 7 and a $500 device like Asus' Transformer Prime? We'll soon test for ourselves, but it's negligible according to Nvidia. The Nexus 7 has a smaller screen and smaller battery, but it's the same Tegra 3 chip, except that it's clocked at 1.3GHz in single-core mode and 1.2GHz in multi-core mode, 100MHz slower than the Transformer Prime's CPU. We watched it play Bladeslinger (picture above; video below) and it certainly seemed to push enough pixels quickly enough to provide good-looking gameplay at the $200 price point.

I just had a bizarre and fairly interesting experience here at Google I/O 2012. After a small, closed press session on Google's Project Glass, company co-founder Sergey Brin decided to let the press here try on the devices for themselves. Including his personal pair.

The demo was set to nothing more than a looping fireworks video, but I got to have a first-hand experience with what Google's Glass is like for those wearing it right now (side note: Sergey was personally placing the glasses on people, and he snapped these photos). According to the Glass team members present, text updates and other notifications can be seen in their displays, as well as menus and options for different camera settings and communication choices — but members of the press didn't get to see any of those screens.

We've shown you the Google Nexus 7 by Asus and told you about the surprising quality you'll get starting at $199, but the most important part of the tablet is arguably the software that's inside. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is here at Google I/O, and we've just spent some quality time with the new revision of the OS. As you'd expect from the ".1," it's not a giant leap forward from Ice Cream Sandwich on phones, but it brings some fairly exciting new features, major tweaks, and brings the tablet version of the OS (at least at this Nexus 7's screen size) closer to that of the smartphone.

With the Nexus Q, Google is planting its flag in the living room, allowing users to share media from Google Play with their home entertainment center. But unlike its closest competitor, the Apple TV, the Nexus Q isn't a standalone platform and requires an Android smartphone or tablet connected to the same Wi-Fi network to access content. The Nexus Q requires one or more Android 4.1 devices to provide access videos or music offered on Google Play, though the company says support for Android 2.3 and beyond should be available at launch. The Nexus Q can be paired with several Android devices simultaneously and supports content from each user's unique Google Play account.

At launch, the Nexus Q will also only provide media sharing capabilities to the Google Play app, and it's unclear when, if ever, third-party apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus will be allowed to share media with the device. By the looks of things, Google TV is, in fact, the true competitor to the Apple TV, and the Nexus Q is merely intended as a gateway device.

Tablets are insanely versatile, and Google's selling its new entry as a total content device with brand new Jelly Bean bells and whistles. Still, let's face it: at this size and price point, the Nexus 7's natural competitors are first and foremost reading-centric tablets like Amazon's Kindle Fire. And make no mistake: Google is selling this as a reading device, adding magazines to Google Play and touting its bookstore as "the world's largest ebook collection." That's the play here: inexpensive hardware, subsidized by selling media, driving customers towards Google's ad-supported services.

So like Microsoft, Google needs to make its own hardware both for its own sake and to show Android OEMs how it's done. But it also needs to stop the Kindle and Nook from bleeding Android dry. Google has to show that the latest and greatest official version of Android performs as well or better on a reading machine than its older forked counterparts.

Google is very good about launching its emulators of the newest versions of Android just as they announce them, and today is no different — Jelly Bean is available now for developers to begin tooling with and testing their apps on. We've taken the opportunity to install the new SDK to spend some extended time with the new operating system, so join us, won't you?

Google just announced that all 6,000 attendees of I/O will be walking away with an Android Developer Pack — a Galaxy Nexus phone, Nexus 7 tablet, the latest OTA update of Jelly Bean (which might take a little while to hit the device), and the Nexus Q. Attendees will be able to pick them up at 4pm today — don't forget your badge and ID. We'll see how long it takes for developers to release Jelly Bean into the wild after getting it on their new devices today — we're willing to bet it won't take long.

Google has just revealed a new Google Glass Explorer Edition of its prototype camera-equipped glasses at I/O 2012. Pre-orders are open today, only for attendees of the I/O conference, and will cost $1,500 for a delivery early next year. As Sergey Brin himself confesses, this is by no means intended to be a consumer product, but Google's keen to get the Project Glass hardware out into people's hands and onto their faces.

Today, Google introduced its long-rumored media streaming box, and it's called the Nexus Q. The Android-powered base station allows users to seamlessly share media from their smartphone or tablet with their home entertainment center. Today at Google I/O, we had an opportunity to see the new streaming box first-hand.

Google has also provided Wired with a number of images showing off the Nexus Q's many internal bits. The $299 "social streaming media player," revealed today at Google I/O, is a cloud-based device that streams music and video, and can also act as a 25-watt amplifier. In the gallery you can see the Q's internals, including a number of uniquely shaped circuit boards and the same chipset as the Galaxy Nexus.

Check out our Google I/O 2012 day one keynote live blog for the latest updates!

Google's Sergey Brin admits that Project Glass may not be as polished as the Nexus 7, but he's just showed off a live skydiving video recorded with the glasses. One of Brin's friends dived out of a plane onto the roof of Moscone while streaming the whole thing through Project Glass in a Hangout. After the diver landed on the roof, Brin switched to a feed of some bikers also wearing glasses, who then launched off the side of the building using ramps, followed by yet another athlete who rappelled to the ground.

Obviously, live video streaming is already possible with current technology, and we're guessing supplementary hardware was required for the show (besides the obvious parachutes, bikes, and ropes.) Even so, we wish more product demos involved extreme sports.

As part of its Google+ revamp, the company has just announced Google+ events, which will include deep integration with Google Calendar. Fortunately, Google+ events aren't limited to users on Google+ only. Google's broken events down into "before, during, and after." As for the "before" party, Google has set up "Cinemagraphs," which have some GIF-like animation qualities, and these Cinemegraphs will show up right on Google Calendar — a nice visual touch.

There's also a new Google+ feature called party mode — if you're at a Google+ event and turn on party mode, all of the photos that you take will be shared automatically with other users at the event. Of course, this sharing is at the user's discretion — if you don't want to share, you don't have to. On Android, you'll even get a notification when the event starts asking you if you want to turn on party mode. There's also a slideshow mode, which shows full-screen lightboxed photos in real-time as they come in.

Google has just announced Google+ for tablets on stage at I/O. The app is available for Android today, and Google says the iOS version will be available "soon." Google says that more users engage with Google+ on mobile than desktops, and a tablet version of it has been sorely missing. The app itself, from what we can tell, looks very slick, with photos front and center to the content, very large in the streams, organizing content based on popularity.

Google+ turns one year old tomorrow, and to celebrate, Google has announced that there are now 250 million Google+ users worldwide. 150 million of these users sign on once or more per month, and of those users 50% (75 million) sign in daily. Each user spends more than 60 minutes per day on Google products, and it ends up that most people who visit Google+ are doing so from mobile devices. People on average spend about 12 minutes using Google+. To respond to the mobile demand, Google today announced Google+ for tablets. "We think it's the best version of Google+ we're ever designed," Google Vice President Vic Gundotra said.

As expected, Google unveiled its own 7-inch tablet today at the start of the company's I/O conference. Asus is helping Google build its tablet, co-branded once it's available in mid-July. Google's Nexus 7 is clearly going head-to-head with other low-cost Android tablets, including Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet — but how do they compare?

The Nexus 7 has the specs advantage when it comes to its processor, featuring a quad-core Tegra 3 — the first 7-inch tablet to do so. Google is also shipping the Nexus 7 complete with the company's new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, making it the most up-to-date 7-inch Android tablet out there. There's also a 1.2-megapixel front camera, which places it ahead of the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0's offering, but there's no rear camera on the Nexus 7 — so if you use a tablet to take photos then you'll be disappointed. Unlike the rest of the 7-inch competitors, the Nexus 7 includes NFC support — but a lack of 3G connection means you'll have to use Wi-Fi to get connectivity on this particular tablet. There's an option for 8GB or 16GB, but at $199 for the base model it's clear that the Nexus 7 will be a popular choice for budget tablet shoppers this summer.

The Play Store may have spilled the beans ahead of schedule, but now Google has officially announced the Nexus Q, an audio and video streaming appliance for users at home. It's a cloud-oriented device, designed to pull media from the Google Play Store as well as YouTube. The Q delivers the media to your television or a set of external speakers — it features a 25-watt amplifier as well — and is powered by the same chipset as the Galaxy Nexus. It features ethernet, Bluetooth, and NFC connectivity, and owners will be able to use their Android devices to control the streamer. Optical audio and micro-HDMI output are included, and the device also features banana-style connectors for connecting speakers.

Multiple Qs can be controlled from a given Android device, turning it into a multi-room solution, but the big selling point here is the social aspect. Different users can add music from their own Google Play music collection to the Q's queue, turning it into a clever option for parties or group events (Bowers & Wilkins offers similar collaborative functionality with its Air Zeppelin app for iOS). 32 LEDs ring the sphere-shaped device, and change color and rhythm depending on the music that's playing (the entire top of the device is a rotating volume control, while a capacitive touch sensor allows for quick and easy muting).

The Asus Nexus 7, Google's first tablet in the Nexus family, is here. You're looking at it right now. We just got our first hands-on pictures of the device... and you'll find impressions, more photos and video right below.