Google made a relatively quiet announcement today regarding how it’s pushing the developer ecosystem forward around Google Now, its intelligent personal assistant for Android devices. The company has begun extending mark up tools for emails from select partners, which help highlight flight schedules, hotel bookings and various types of reservations, to make sure that Gmail can spot that information and use it to auto-generate helpful reminders in Google Now.

The extension of the platform tools available to Now partners was announced by Google’s Baris Gultekin, who was one of the creators of Google Now, which sprung out of a project he came up with in his so-called “20 percent time.” He spoke with Google’s Louis Gray on the Developer Live video stream which ran throughout the I/O conference this year.

Gultekin was talking about ways in which Google is working to improve the quality and relevancy of the recommendations and data it surfaces. The project sounds like it’s fairly limited for now, but asking for help from the input sources of data seems like a smart way to supplement Google’s own data detection algorithms that are working to flag interesting data for Now’s use on their own data center side. Doing all the heavy lifting themselves might be more impressive, but if reaching out to partners can help improve user experience, then there’s no reason not to extend that hand.

No word yet on whether Google will eventually make those mark up tools available for different types of data or open them up for public use, but it’s easy to imagine a scenario where that happens, allowing developers and startups to provide the option of delivering all kinds of relevant information to users from their apps and services on Android. Then again, that has the potential to become overwhelming for users, so we might see a more metered, gradual approach.

Google’s Vikram Aggarwal, a software engineer working on the Android platform, revealed today that Gmail and Email, the native Android client that still ships on Android devices as well, now has a combined user base of more than 100 million across the Android install base. It’s an interesting stat, because although Gmail and Email only represent two of a multitude of email clients available on Android, it’s likely that those two represent the email clients of choice for a wide swath of Android users.

This means that a 100-million-strong active user base for those two combined is probably a pretty good reflection of the total active user base of Android itself, give or take a few million users. That’s a good figure to get, since we usually see more about total activations, which is a far less accurate measure of how many people are currently using devices. Activations occur whenever there is a full device reset, for instance, and people often upgrade to new phones, meaning their previous activation is no longer an active one.

Google has passed 900 million Android activations, the company revealed at the I/O keynote earlier this week. Put in context of a 100-million-strong active user base for the core email apps operating on the platform, however, we get a picture of Android users which is much more down to earth. Estimates of active Apple devices have to take into account the 500 million sold to date, with over 300 million now on iOS 6. Updated to that version or being sold with it installed indicates there’s a good chance a lot of those are still in active use.

Divining the total number of active users on either platform is one part magic and one part science, and the 100 million is likely shy of the actual total of active Android devices out there, but it’s still another piece of the puzzle.

Google held a session today at I/O 2013 about how to make money on Android, and in the initial few minutes it shared some updated stats around Google Play revenues and how those are progressing. Not surprisingly, the big growth is coming with in-app purchases, though Google’s recently launched subscription model is also making headway.

Google said that its in-app revenues through Play are up 700 percent since the same time last year, which is reflected in the top apps as listed by highest grossing titles in the Play rankings. Subscriptions, which just launched around 12 months ago, is also making headway, doubling inbound revenue each quarter according to Google. Some apps which use subscription as their exclusive revenue model are now cracking the top grossing list, like Pandora.

The momentum is still clearly behind in-app purchase, and as a result Google suggested that there’s good reason to consider that as a revenue model when building apps. Session host and Google Play Product Manger for Commerce and Monetization Ibrahim Elbouchikhi said that while the team likes to play a game called “Where’s Minecraft?” where they spot the world simulation sim from Notch, which continues to sit high on the charts despite being a one-time purchase paid app, the trend is overwhelmingly favoring freemium experiences.

Other key trends identified include a higher propensity to buy things on tablets vs. phones. Google framed this in light of its attempts to get developers to build tablet-optimized experience, saying that there’s a 1.7x higher purchase rate on tablets than on phones for apps. Also, updated versions of apps that take advantage of recent platform additions like the new capabilities unveiled at I/O this year have a 2.2x advantage at monetization vs. older versions, on average.

For Google, spelling that out is a way of it being able to show devs that it makes financial sense to invest the resources and efforts needed to convert apps to tablet versions, or to make them available with as many new features as possible that show off Android’s system improvements. And it does look to be having an effect on Google’s efforts to improve Android user monetization; Elbouchikhi said that average revenue per user (ARPU) among the Android install base is up 2.5x versus the same time last year.

Google unveiled its completely redesigned Google Maps product on the web at I/O 2013, and at a panel dedicated to the new Maps experience, Maps User Experience Design Lead Jonah Jones and Engineering Director for Maps on the web Yatin Chawathe took us through what went into creating Maps and the engineering effort behind the considerable change seems prodigious.

Specifically, Jones and Chawathe took us much deeper into two of the main driving concepts behind the redesign of Maps, including “Building A Map For Every Place” and “Explore The World.” The former has to do with customizing maps every time a user clicks on a new location, in real-time and with more contextually relevant information, and the latter involves providing beautiful imagery including via Earth integration directly into maps, and with 3D virtual photo tours.

A Map For Every Place

In making a Maps product that is extremely adaptive to both a user’s personal input sources and to specific locales, Google had to rethink its approach to maps, and it looked to the way we casually share directions as a marker of a good system for surfacing relevant information. When you draw a map on a napkin, you are automatically filtering out the most important information, and doing it with your specific audience in mind. The result is a simplified map, that involves maybe a few major routes, as well as smaller roads, and a prioritization that doesn’t necessarily reflect how important a road is to the general population.

“A map draw for you is great because it highlights aspects and things personal to you,” Jones explained, adding that there’s also nostalgic value in something like a hand drawn map. Google wanted to be able to replicate both of these, and so it took an engineering approach to automate a process that’s normally human-powered.

Google didn’t want to exactly replicate the hand-drawn map, however, since it leaves out a lot of information that you want to still be present in a modern, digital, interactive map. But it did want to subtly highlight and downplay certain map elements, bring to the fore aspects that are useful and fading back others that aren’t as important. To do that, it took a big data analytics approach.

First, for a specific location the new Maps algorithm will analyze the entire set of people looking for directions in that area, and then highlight the routes that come up most often. Then from that subset they’ll focus in even further and weigh more vs. less important routes, based again on aggregated user data. They can see which roads are more popular, and then pop those out vs. the less important ones. Finally the less important ones are cut away, and you’re left with something resembling the hand-written map.

Once those are flagged, however, you could still be missing info on the ground regarding very small routes important to a specific place. Those are then targeted via a hyper local re-labeling algorithm that addresses just the immediate surroundings, adding labels to key routes and taking them away from other locations to decrease clutter and subtly change the focus.

That then informs the UI rendering of the Map itself, which still retains the street markers for all surrounding routes. Lines along routes important to getting there are made bold and lines on less important streets are thinned out, but not removed in case some users still require that information. It’s about drawing attention and changing perspective, not eliminating something altogether.

All of the above takes advantage of the immense processing power in Google’s data center to do the whole thing in real-time every single second, for every single one of Map’ millions of users. Yet the impact on a user’s computing requirements is minimal; Google sends even less data than it did with the previous version of Maps, keeping bandwidth requirements low.

Explore The World

Google’s other big addition to the new Maps experience has to do with bringing beautiful imagery to the web, in the form of both Google Earth 3D flyovers and the new virtual tours that provide an up-close-and-personal view of some prime spots. Those virtual tours also represent a massive engineering effort, one which Chawathe explained in broad strokes on stage.

The virtual tours are a crowdsourced effort, which users may not even realize they’re actively contributing to. The images are drawn from pictures uploaded to Google+, Panoramio and other sources within the Google photo sharing ecosystem.

To get from that group of photos to an actual 3D tour requires a lot more than just aggregating photos, however. Google says it can map not only where every photo in its database was taken, but can also tie each individual pixel in every image to a very specific location using its algorithm, making it much easier to stitch sets together. Once that process is complete, it’s left with a point cloud that can flesh out a region, but that’s a brute force approach, and some art is required to make it look good.

That involves filtering the photos, picking ones that show the landmark in context with its surroundings, ones that show the landmark clearly from visually pleasing angles, pics that capture architectural detail, interesting picturesque scenes in various lighting conditions and more. It picks these photos based on visual recognition tech and their popularity and ratings on Google properties; so an image that gets a lot of +1s on Google+ will be rated over one that’s got none, for example.

Once it has a set of top-quality pictures, it determines an order in which they should appear that makes the most sense. Even then it wouldn’t be smooth as a finished product, however, since there gaps and the transition between angles would involve a lot of bizarre warping and image artifacts that would taint the overall experience. So finally, Google’s algorithm goes back to the larger set of images and picks ones that fit nicely in the gaps. These don’t need to be the best quality, since they’re just filling out the animation.

Jones said that what they’ve built is impressive, but still pales in comparison to what a human artist could achieve manually stitching together their own photo tour. He hopes to bring up Google’s automated process to the point where it’s impressive regardless of the source, and comparable with what humans are capable of working on their own.

In response to a question from the audience, Chawathe also said that Google could in the future look for a way to make its 3D guided tour feature a consumer tool. It sounds like it’s not something Google is currently developing, but putting that power in the hands of Google+ users for instance might make it more of a draw for photography enthusiasts. Google already showed that it’s making efforts in that direction with the new auto-enhance and auto-awesome features it introduced for G+ at I/O.

The World In Your Browser Changes As Fast As The Real One Does

These efforts show how Google is making use of its immense computer processing power to deliver experiences via Maps that reflect a continually changing world. It sounds like this is just the beginning for both of the projects, too, and as with every major change, we’ll probably see more refinement of these approaches as users come on board and provide more feedback.

Google impressed a lot of people when it debuted its Grand Canyon Street View imagery in October. The Trekker backpack used to capture that imagery, which is essentially a backpack-mounted version of the same all-seeing eye that sits atop the Google Street View car.

The roughly 40-pound backpack is not all that uncomfortable to wear, I found out when I slipped the Trekker on. It’s a little top-heavy, and I’m not sure I’d want to risk running at a brisk clip if I was using one out in the wild, but it’s really no heavier than a standard backpacker’s kit for a few days’ journey.

Silverman explained how the Trekker works, including how its camera sensor head gathers images and how those are then stored on a hefty solid state hard drive built into the backpack, where they can later be transferred back to Google’s servers to get started with the process of recreating a hike.

I asked Silverman whether we might see the Trekker make its way to the backs of other beings beyond humans, and he said that they are indeed mulling the idea of strapping versions of it to beasts of burden to help them continue to map the world in images. There are also plans in the works to mount it to remotely operated robots and small vehicles to help get imagery that otherwise wouldn’t be easily reachable by a human Trekker.

He said to expect plenty more to come from the Trekker team in terms of Street View imagery of some of the world’s most interesting – and most remote – locales. Combined with Google’s new underwater street view project, that means everyone can probably get a lot more familiar with a lot more of the world in the near future.

One of the most interesting product demos on display at Google I/O this year was a virtual sky diving simulation built using eight separate computers running Chrome, along with a Kinect-like motion sensor made by ASUS called the Xtion Pro. The Maps Dive experiment was created by Portland-based independent digital agency Instrument.

Developer Ben Purdy explained that they built the impressive tech demo to show what’s now possible with Chrome and how it can be used to create an amazingly rendered multi-display experience that looks like you’d expect it to be powered by current-gen gaming hardware instead of just a loose assortment of lightweight Linux-based computers running the kind of code that web developers are already comfortable with.

Maps Dive provided an experience that seemed at least as accurate and sensitive as your typical Kinect game. Purdy said that it’s really just an early example of things that could be built with the computers we already have, as well as mobile devices. Considering how far Chrome already reaches, imagining this type of experience running on even low-cost Chromebooks and Android tablets does open up a lot of possibilities.

NVIDIA brought its new Shield handheld gaming system to Google I/O this year and showed off a near-production device. The Shield made its debut at CES this year, surprising most since it’s a consumer handheld device from a company that generally makes internal components. But it has some neat tricks up its sleeve, including a Tegra 4 chipset, 2GB of RAM, a 5-inch 720p display and 16GB of internal storage.

The Shield units available at I/O this week were all running Android and showing off Android games with hardware controller support, and none were demoing the PC game streaming that NVIDIA said would be coming to Shield as a beta when it comes to retail in June.

My experience with the NVIDIA was limited to just a few games, including the Epic Citadel demo that always gets trotted out to demonstrate amazing graphics capabilities on mobile devices. There were also a couple of playable cart racers in action, and all of the above performed well and really showed that the hardware is capable of rendering high-quality video smoothly and without any apparent effort. For a device that’s essentially a smartphone without the actual phone powers, but with more physical buttons for $349, that’s an important achievement to be able to claim.

Shield does its Android job well, and the hardware feels great to these gamers’ hands. Buttons are slightly clicky and the ergonomics are solid, and the thing doesn’t take up too much more space than an Xbox controller when the screen is folded down and it’s in travel mode. There’s mini-HDMI, which was outputting gameplay to a small HD television, and a micro-USB slot for charging. The onboard screen boasts “retinal” quality 294 PPI pixel density, which means video and games look silky smooth.

Maybe the best part is that NVIDIA has gone for a pretty near stock Android Jelly Bean experience, which a rep from the company told me was a conscious choice they made after first trying a more involved widget overlay that ended up making for a much less pleasant experience. Navigating the stock Android with hardware controls (you can also always use the touchscreen) is also surprisingly intuitive.

All that said, this is a strange device with a market that’s probably going to be pretty niche. Really, it almost seems like a reference device designed to show off the power of Tegra, but NVIDIA is actually shipping the thing, so those of us like me who actually have a hankering for this kind of hardware will really be able to buy it even if it doesn’t become a runaway success.

Leap Motion was showing off its still unreleased gesture motion controller for computers at Google I/O 2013. The demo unit allowed you to use the controller to navigate Google Earth, and the functionality felt ready for prime time to me, as this was the first time I’d ever used the Leap Motion. The controls seemed intuitive, and within a few minutes I was flying around the globe pretty handily, though I did have some trouble finding San Francisco.

I asked about Leap Motion’s recent announcement that it would delay launch in order to further beta test Leap, and as you can see in the video the company is keen to note that the hardware is solid, but there’s a need for more testing around the consumer experience. Leap seems very confident they can deliver by their new anticipated ship date of late July, however.

The tech is impressive regardless of whether it hits a little later than anticipated, but it’ll be interesting to see if the extended beta has an effect on how it’s eventually received by consumers.

Google announced a number of new partner apps today on stage at Google I/O during the “Developing for Glass” session. Facebook and Twitter were the highlights of the list, which also included Evernote, Tumblr, Elle and CNN, in addition to the previously announced NYT and Path apps.

CNN

The CNN app sends video to Glass via updates, and streams news to a browsable feed. It can alert users when there’s breaking news in a category that they want to follow, and those alerts can be customized to show up at specific times of day. They show up as text but can also be read aloud using the Mirror API.

Twitter

The Twitter app provides your stream, as well as posting capabilities and the power to snap photos from Glass and post them direct to your stream. On stage, Glass developer evangelist Timothy Jordan emphasized the DM capabilities on Twitter for Glass and how the messages add to a thread that becomes a bundle on Glass. With Twitter, one thing to note is that you have to specify who you receive notifications from (by default it tracks all the users you have mobile notifications enabled for), otherwise you may be greeted with an unending torrent.

Evernote

Evernote on Glass holds true to its note-taking roll, giving users the ability to have their notes shared to Glass from the web or mobile apps. Content is translated to simple text by the Glass service and displayed as simple short paginated messages.

Facebook

Facebook on Glass essentially acts as a new photo sharing tool, giving users a chance to immediately post pics to their FB timeline, and to then add captions and descriptions to those images via voice input once they’re posted. The pics can be deleted immediately if added by accident, and also shared either privately or with friends and the public. Jordan described the simple sharing and annotation features as exemplary of how a Glass experience should work.

Read more about the tiny team of three who built Facebook For Glass and strengthened ties between the social and search giants in our follow up “How An Ex-Googler Built Facebook For Glass”.

Elle

Elle provides snippets in the form of headlines to make it easy to browse through at a glance, and you can also add things to reading lists, or have articles read aloud. For Elle, Jordan said it’s a good way to funnel users to the main website later, and also a means of providing them with info about what articles are proving most interesting to users.

Tumblr

The Tumblr app for Glass allows you to receive updates from your Tumblr dashboard, and you can adjust the frequency with which you receive those. It also lets you post all kinds of content, including text, images and video.

All the apps are available today if you’re lucky enough to be an Explorer or a developer with access to the hardware.

Google held a session today hosted by Timothy Jordan, developer advocate on Project Glass on how to develop for the gadget, and while most of it focused on what developers can do right now with the available documentation and Mirror API which makes use of a tethered phone’s capabilities, Jordan also spoke briefly about Google’s upcoming GDK or Glass Developer Kit, which will be a native development framework for Glass hardware itself.

The GDK will be available at a later date, Jordan said, and didn’t get more specific, but it will allow developers to access a “handful of things” that they can’t currently do with the Mirror API. While the mirror handles 80 to 90 percent of what Google has found users want in a good Glass experience, there are things like offline tasks and access to hardware features like location that require a native API. Hence the GDK.

This will enable “immediate access to hardware” and Glass’s built-in capabilities, so that Glass developers will be able to build things like navigation apps on Glass itself, so you can find your way even if you’re not necessarily connected to the web.

The GDK is in development, and we’ll likely see it before Glass gets its big consumer debut, since it seems like this is a piece of the puzzle that could contribute significantly to the final user experience.

Google revealed Hangouts, its unified text, video and multimedia messaging platform yesterday during its epic three-hour I/O keynote, but while the platform pulls in Google Talk, Google+ and other sources, it was apparently missing SMS integration. Incorporating texts from your carrier is on the way, however, according to Hangouts and Chat community manager Dori Storbeck, who said as much in a reply to a question  (via 9to5Google)about SMS integration on Google+.

The integration will go a long way to truly unifying communications via the service, which is available on Gmail, Android, iOS and Chrome right now. SMS feeding into the Hangouts stream also means that it borrows a trick from what Facebook has added to Facebook Messenger with Chat Heads on select hardware devices, and it also provides Google with a fairly strong feature advantage over competitors including dedicated mobile messaging providers like WhatsApp and Kik, which don’t pull in content from SMS sources.

When SMS does arrive, expect it to make its way to Android only, as there’s not much developers can do to build in SMS on iOS, as those permissions are not open. Hangouts also dropped XMPP in Hangouts, which doesn’t bode well for Google IM on other platforms and in other apps, but it looks like the company is pretty open to building other protocols into its own service.

Google took the lid off of its new version of Maps at I/O 2013 today, which is a dramatic redesign of the long-standing navigation and place-finding software across all platforms. We got a chance to go hands-on with the new Maps, which is still a beta product, with access only given out to a few select users so far. In the video above, you check it out in action as a Google rep gives us a walkthrough.

The new Google Maps takes a bunch of stuff that Google has been working on from Knowledge Graph to make, as it put it during the keynote, billions of apps for billions of people. That means you get a lot more personalization pulled into the experience, surfacing local landamrks that are likely important to you, as well as one-click directions from stored locations like your home address. Places frequented by your friends and acquaintances will also be pulled in to complete the picture.

The whole experience on a Chromebook Pixel was fast, responsive and remarkably intuitive. All the new touch controls seem perfectly designed for use with the Pixel’s touchscreen display, and reduce dramatically the number of steps required to do things like call up directions. The in-building panoramas and 360-degree images are very impressive, and truly do give you a sense of both the inside and outside of a location, but don’t expect the images to be all that comprehensive for most locations at launch.

Overall this looks like an awesome improvement to the Maps experience, and it’s hard to see any spots where the progress isn’t a good thing. But it’s very different, so expect some pushback when Google does eventually push this live to a wider audience.

Google+ is getting a big update for its photos experience, which is rolling out to users now. Initial impressions show a work flow that makes it easier to tweak pictures quickly and even automatically, without requiring that you learn a huge amount about Photoshop or other editing software.

It’s something that’s designed to be mostly a non-destructive, light-touch product by default, just tweaking things like vignetting, skin smoothing and color balance to make elements pop. If you do a lot of volume image editing, bringing in lots of photos and essentially running the same few tweaks on each, this could be a simple way to replace that with something better, especially since Google+ allows for full resolution uploads to its cloud-based image locker service.

I’m so far pretty impressed with the Google+ image tweaking experience, particularly the Motion feature that stitches together images taken in quick succession to make GIFs. If you’ve ever dug into creating your own shareable GIFs, you probably know that it’s not as straightforward as it appears to be. Motion takes the hassle out of that, deliverying on a very specific need that could help fuel the next generation of BuzzFeed writers and Redditors.

For Google, bringing an improved photos experience to Google+ is a way for it to compete with other social networks like Facebook and their media-focused add-ons like Instagram. It’s also going to be trouble for startups like Shoebox that are also looking into cloud photo organization and management. Will it help the social network from Google become more social? We’ll see.

Apple had a bit of a head start when it came to mobile software sales, since it launched its App Store earlier than the Android Market — now called Google Play. The gap between the two, which was more pronounced in terms of initial downloads, has begun to close. Today both Play and the App Store announced very similar milestones.

Apple has been counting down to its 50 billionth app download for a while now. In fact, the assets were leaked via the Apple website backend code earlier today, so we all knew it was coming. Coincidence that it would land on a Google keynote day? That’s hard to tell, but Google had its own milestone to announce: 48 billion downloads announced onstage at I/O today.

The announcements give us a unique opportunity to compare download numbers from both stores on as equal footing as possible, and the result is a snapshot of two app stores that are neck and neck — at least in terms of straight downloads.

That doesn’t take into account paid vs. free apps, or how much revenue each makes from ads and other sources. But as you can see from the graph, it marks one area at least where Google used to trail considerably but is now catching up. Also the fact that Google’s Android OS now accounts for a majority percentage of global smartphone sales means it shouldn’t be surprising that there are a lot of people downloading apps.

Google announced some fresh updates for Google Now today, consisting of six new types of cards that will show up in the automated, intelligent digital assistant feature for Android and iOS. The new cards include a location-based Reminder feature, public transit travel times, and information about books, music, TV shows and video games that might be of timely interest to users.

The new Google Cards Reminder feature is based on time, people and location and can be set with simple voice commands using natural language processing. It’s like the geofenced Reminders that are used by Apple in iOS, but looks to be arguably more useful since it ties into the Google Now knowledge graph. Reminders takes Now further by giving users a way to actively set and retrieve content, which should help prove its worth among users who weren’t getting much out of the automated results previously being generated by the engine.

The other new cards provide good, useful info for getting around town, but all the new media additions should also Google help drive Google Play sales. It’s a clever way for Google to begin using Now, its next-generation predictive search tool, to drive the kinds of revenue that it might be missing out on more and more as traditional desktop search advertising becomes a less lucrative area in the new mobile age.

Google is offering a version of the Samsung Galaxy S4, arguably one of the top current Android devices, with Jelly Bean 4.2 unlocked on Google Play beginning June 26, the company revealed at I/O today. The news is big because it’s the first non-Nexus device to get blessed with this opportunity, and Google says it will be updated in time with all other Nexus devices.

The Galaxy S4 will cost $649 with no contract, and will be usable on both AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., Google said today. At that price it isn’t exactly cheap, but people are probably willing to pay for an untouched Android experience on some of the most powerful smartphone hardware available.

The S4 is not only carrier unlocked, but it also has a fully unlocked bootloader. That means that owners of the device can load their own software on to the device, including things like CyanogenMod, which allows for extremely deep device software customization options. In other words, this new unlocked S4 will essentially be the ultimate developer plaything, but again it’s likely to have more or less niche appeal because of the high price tag.

What’s interesting about this is that Samsung emphasized all its software additions to the stock Android experience at the Galaxy S4 launch event, and this is basically stripping all that away. Reviewers seemed more or less overwhelmed by Samsung’s software smorgasbord, so this might result in a much better device overall.

Google is ramping up to deliver a streaming music service, which could debut as early as tomorrow at the I/O keynote, sources have told The Verge. The report has since been picked up by other publications, including The New York Times, which confirms that this is indeed the case according to its own unnamed sources, “people briefed on the plans.”

That Google would be working on a streaming, Spotify-style music service should surprise exactly no one. It’s been the elephant in the room among the major purveyors of digital music, including Apple, Amazon and Google ever since Spotify and competitors like Rdio emerged and started picking up steam and adding users.

Neither Spotify nor Rdio have come anywhere close to unseating the big guys in terms of users or music revenues, but that doesn’t mean that Apple and Google haven’t noticed the growing trend towards streaming. Juniper Research said recently that streamed music revenues will grow by more than 40 percent in 2013, rising to $1.7 billion by the end of the year. That’s still peanuts compared to the revenue Apple alone drives from iTunes music sales each year (it paid out $3.4 billion to record labels in 2012, which is after it takes its own cut).

The Google streaming service has been in development for a while now, according to rumors, but negotiations have now progressed to the point where it’s ready to launch, with all three major record labels signed up. There won’t be a free option, says the NYT, but instead there will be a paid subscription available at or around the going rate at competing services, or roughly $10 per month.

If true, this means Google’s negotiations with streaming services have progressed far faster and further than Apple’s, which reportedly hit a snag earlier this week. Both Apple and Google had previously raced to introduce cloud-based digital locker services for Google music, which allowed people to access tracks they’d previously purchased remotely from a variety of devices rather than stream tracks Spotify-style. That seemed like a sure precursor to a true streaming service, but labels were reportedly reluctant to go all-in on that model originally.

The strangest thing about this is that Google is reportedly still doing the YouTube-based streaming music service that had previously made the rounds, in addition to this new one, which will apparently operate alongside it. How these work, especially in terms of what they give users access to and for what cost, should provide an interesting look at how Google is looking at dividing its media business efforts.

We’ll likely find out tomorrow if this Google streaming thing is for real, live at the I/O keynote right here on TechCrunch.

Realmac Software is showing off its latest app today, ahead of a launch to come later in the month. The app is called Analog, and is an iPhone version of its desktop quick and easy photo manipulation software. I’ve been beta testing the software, and the experience it provides is in keeping with Realmac’s other recent mobile releases, like the super simple to-do app Clear it created in concert with Impending. So why does the world need yet another mobile photo app with filters? I asked Realmac Software head honcho Dan Counsell to find out.

“It seems like most of the current popular photo apps are competing on features, they keep cramming more and more into them to try and outdo each other,” he explained. “In doing this they have become overly complex and confusing for new users. Camera apps should be fun to use with a minimal interface that just stays out of the way allowing the user to focus on what really matters, their photos.”

That’s what Analog manages to achieve. It inherits this approach to simplified photo editing from the desktop version, but adds touch-specific interfaces and controls that are much better suited to the iPhone’s screen. These use a bold, flat design that emphasize clean lines, large hit hit points and a grid-like pattern that provides all your sharing and editing options in as few screens as is possible.

Another aspect of Analog’s simplicity is that it doesn’t try to replace the social networks you already use with a new one. That’s by design, according to Counsell.

“Online services come and go but by having an app that’s service agnostic we can easily adapt to change.,” he said. “Not to mention the fact that it’s easier for users to have one app that posts to multiple services rather than having to hop in and out of a bunch of different apps.”

Analog started out as an idea that was actually pretty far removed from mobile photography. Counsell said the original Mac app was inspired by his own love of photography, which inspired a need for software that wasn’t quite as daunting or involved as something like Photoshop.

“I love my DSLR and take the majority of my photos with it, so developing Analog for the Mac first was an easy decision,” he said. “After the Analog for Mac launch we had a lot of requests from users saying they wanted it on iOS, so we thought we’d give it a shot and see what happens.”

Realmac is behind Courier, LittleSnapper and RapidWeaver in addition to Clear, and has a solid reputation among Mac fans and iPhone users. Analog will be available on the iPhone at launch a little later on this month.

Google’s big annual developer conference kicks off on Wednesday, and while Android lead Sundar Pichai has downplayed big new announcements at Google I/O this year, we’ve also seen reports that suggest the Nexus line of Google-branded hardware won’t go completely untouched.

Nexus Phones

The rumors suggest that we won’t see a brand new Nexus phone at Google I/O this year, but what we could see instead is a mid-cycle upgrade for the Nexus 4. In fact, the existing version seems tailor-made for a couple quick internal hardware upgrades to inject some fresh life into sales and activate some new buzz around the product, which by most accounts has been selling fairly well, especially when compared to previous Nexus flagship phones.

What we’ve heard indicates that the Google Nexus 4 will appear at I/O boasting a 32GB internal memory upgrade, along with built-in LTE support. There’s an LTE-capable wireless radio built into the current Nexus 4, but it lacks a proper signal amplifier and as such remains officially disabled. Nearer the Nexus 4′s launch, you could activate it with a backdoor hack, but Google quickly shut that down.

Both these spec bumps would be easy enough to accomplish, and are both considered the most noteworthy obvious flaws on an otherwise very impressive device. And a new spy shot making the rounds today backs up earlier claims we might see a white version of the Nexus 4, which so far only ships in black, which could be another factor in convincing new buyers to take the plunge.

It’s not clear how exactly Motorola’s devices will fit into the Nexus line, but it’s also worth mentioning that a new device labeled the “Motorola XT1058″ has just been spotted making its way through the FCC, which suggests it might arrive very soon. What precious little info the filing contains suggests that this could be the fabled XFON we’ve been hearing Motorola is working on for Google, and it could theoretically make an I/O appearance, but this could also be yet another smartphone already on Motorola’s roadmap pre-acquisition, and there’s no guarantee we’ll see it at the show either way.

Nexus Tablets

There’s less buzz around new Nexus tablet hardware making an appearance at I/O, but there are some indications we could see some upgrades there, too. KGI Securities analyst Mingchi Kuo says there’s a brand new Nexus 7 coming, with a high-res, 1920×1200 display, an improved processor and a decent rear camera.

Reuters also reported earlier that a next-gen Nexus 7 would arrive, powered by a Qualcomm chip just like Kuo reports, but they’ve pegged that tablet for a release in July, which suggests we might not see it at I/O after all, except maybe in a preview capacity. Google demoed the original Nexus 7 at I/O in 2012, however, before bringing the device to market in mid-July 2012, so we could see a similar pattern repeat itself here.

I’d hesitate to suggest we’ll hear about much more beyond the Nexus 7 in the tablet category. Sales of the Nexus 10 have reportedly been quite low so far, and that device was only introduced in partnership with Samsung late last year. Google will likely want to give it a bit more time to try to pick up sales, or might focus its Nexus tablet efforts on the apparently more popular 7-inch market instead.

Earlier rumors suggested we might see a Nexus 11 make its initial appearance at I/O, too, but while it reportedly sits on Samsung’s roadmap for the year, there’s been nothing so far to indicate we’ll see it at I/O.

Nexus Q (LOL)

We won’t see Google’s bizarre boondoggle make an appearance at this year’s conference, and we didn’t really need AllThingsD’s reported confirmation of that fact to predict its absence, but it’s nice to have it.

The Nexus Q was Google’s attempt at answering the Apple TV and AirPlay if you recall, but it was an overpriced, precious gadget that essentially screamed “niche,” and a small one at that. Kuo said in the same report that detailed updated Nexus hardware that we’d see Google come back up to the plate with a stronger Apple TV-type device later this year, but it doesn’t look like we’ll see that at I/O.

Pichai said in his Wired interview this morning that Google doesn’t have “much in the way of launches of new products” at the moment, but that leaves wiggle room. It sounds like he’s trying to manage expectations, and a couple of upgrades to existing product lines would be right in line with something Google hopes will impress, but not on the scale of something like a new smart watch or the original Google Glass reveal.

SketchParty TV is a game that essentially allows a group of people to play a version of Draw Something on a big screen in a party setting, usually with between four and six players. The AirPlay component works by allowing AirPlay Mirroring to turn your Apple TV-connected television or display into the easel for the game. A player gets the word they’re supposed to draw on their iPhone or iPad, and as they draw on the screen, that image appears (without the clue words) on the TV, allowing others to join in and guess.

The app earned high praise from tech bloggers including Federico Viticci and Jim Dalrymple of the Loop nearer to its original launch back in July last year, but overall the response from the general public has been more muted. SketchParty TV’s Braun explained in an interview that to date, SketchParty TV has seen only around 5,000 total downloads, which he says still has probably put the game in front of between 20,000 and 30,000 people, given that it’s meant to be used in a group setting.

Those “aren’t breathtaking numbers,” admits Braun, but the reviews have been positive and this seems to be more an issue of consumer education and getting the feature out there than any limitation of the AirPlay tech itself, Braun suggests.

“Apple has a lot of technology in their platform to encourage developers to support, and AirPlay Mirroring is a smaller piece of the equation than something like, say, iCloud,” he explained. “There’s also a consumer education component involved – right now it seems to be up to the savvy to disseminate the wonders of AirPlay to their friends by word of mouth. Or by showing off games like SketchParty TV.”

Others like Real Racing have embraced the two-screen Mirroring experience, but even the support of a major publisher like EA hasn’t pushed it into the spotlight, and Apple isn’t exactly crowing about the feature either. They advertised that AirPlay Mirroring made it possible to see the same thing on your TV as you’re watching on the iPhone or iPad, but there’s been no formal campaign to promote the fact that gamers can get a true, Wii U style dual-screen gaming experience from current apps with the tools available now.

“It’s been surprising to me that there are many people who have an Apple TV and an iOS device and are aware of the ability to send a video stream over AirPlay, or mirror the device display, but not of the ability to do second-screen to the television and show different content on each,” Braun said about the conspicuous absence of hype around the feature. “Personally, I’d love for Apple to give more love to the Apple TV – whether that means improvements to the current offering or some bold new direction like an actual HDTV set.”

Rumors still prevail that Apple is planning its own HDTV set, despite the fact that this has been rumored for years now. But if it does come true, that would provide a big reason for Apple to push more of its features. The other big question mark that remains centers around whether Apple might just open the Apple TV platform to third-party apps, which might minimize, though not eliminate, the benefits of having an AirPlay-connected game.

Braun says that the addressable market is large for this type of experience, ranging between 10 to 12 million by his calculations, and with plenty of growth potential thanks to the more than 300 million strong iOS user pool. It’s a bigger potential market than that represented by the current combined sales of all major home gaming consoles, in fact, with the provision that Apple needs to blanket more of those with the AirPlay component. One way or another, that’s a market that won’t go ignored for long.