Today, Steve Lee of the Google X and Glass Team, announced that as of last week, all 2,000 developers who signed up for the Glass Explorer program at last year’s I/O conference have now been invited to pick up their devices from Google’s offices in Mountain View, New York City or Los Angeles.

Of course, not everyone has to actually pay the $1,500 to get them if they don’t want to, but it’s safe to say that most of these developers will be picking them up and dropping down the cash.

Lee also noted that the 8,000 #ifihadglass “winners” who still have to pay their way will start getting theirs soon. The importance of having the device in the hands of those who will be building apps, the only way that we’ll ever know what the device is capable of, was not an easy thing to do. You can’t really seed a device that sits on your face quietly, thus the need for an Explorer program that was announced last year. Lee said: “This isn’t something that we could have worked on in some secret lab; it had to be out in the real world.”

Lee also noted that Glass will receive monthly software updates with bug fixes and new features, which means that we can expect another one to come sometime in early June, similar to the one on May 8th. The experience wasn’t completely overhauled with the last update; the introduction of a “long press” for search was handy.

As we’ve walked around the I/O conference, it’s been commonplace to find someone stopping to take a picture or slide through the timeline in front of their place. There are still a lot of questions to be answered as to whether this is a device that will catch on for consumers, but watching its evolution in the earliest days is fun.

Something that’s interesting to note is that Google executives, like Larry Page and Vic Gundotra, haven’t been sporting their Glass, specifically on stage yesterday for the keynote. Some feel like this was a way to tone down the hype about the product, letting developers take over the “spokesperson” role for Glass.

There has been a lot of talk about rooting your Glass device, or if it’s even possible. Well, it is. During a Hacking Google Glass session today, the team shared the steps to go through to gain root access for your Glass device.

Only the Fastboot tool for UNIX works, but there have been issues with using the OS X one. An official native dev kit will be available, too, which was announced earlier. If you can’t wait for an SDK to port your apps from Android to Glass, then get your root on.

This will void your warranty, so beware:

The entire process seems to take about 10-15 minutes, giving you warning messages along the way:

After you’ve run through all of that, bam, you get access to the entire data partition. You’re rooted and your device is worth nothing:

One developer has run Ubuntu on Glass, something that only a handful of geeks will try, but fun nonetheless:

“This isn’t the recommended Glass team way of building apps,” said the team, but hacking is worth it, right? When you root the device, Google’s support team will no longer help you if you get stuck. If you’re worried about voiding your warranty, the Glass team also discussed the device’s debug mode, which is much safer.

Participating in hackathons is nothing new in certain parts of the world, especially Silicon Valley. Once in a blue moon, a small team of people creates something exciting that generates buzz, potentially selling to a larger company.

One developer took on 80 competitors at a hackathon called “TVnext” and won with a solution to save you from reading spoilers on Twitter with an app called Twivo. The developer has nabbed an internship at the company she built the hack on top of — Twitter.

This particular developer’s story took on a life of its own, not just because the app was really cool (I often don’t pay attention to my feed during Saturday Night Live, because all of the people on the other coast ruin it for me), but because Jen Lamere is a female developer who was up against an all-male group of hackers. She was 17 at the time. An attendee discussed the scene with Mother Jones, explaining: “the only other females in attendance, that I saw anyway, were an organizer, two camerawomen, a caterer, three judges, and a participant’s wife.”

The news of Lamere’s summer internship, which looks like it will be with the Crashyltics team specifically, came via Twitter, naturally:

Super excited to intern at @twitter @crashlytics this summer!—
Jen Lamere (@jenniee_l) May 16, 2013

There’s no word on what she’ll be doing, but the experience that she’ll get will be incredibly useful.

Whether you want to take this news as a win for female developers, teenagers or technology as a whole, the story is a great one. At its very core, you have someone who is fascinated enough with tech to take the step and build something without a team, present it publicly at a hackathon and then take it to the next level by pursuing an internship…and that’s inspiring.

While not every hackathon project will lead to some type of fundraising or exit, or even an actual startup, this is a nice lesson to learn that the networking and experience gained at an event like this can go a long way. It’s also nice to see Twitter, a company that is preparing for an eventual IPO, give chances to younger coders. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya told the audience at Disrupt NYC that “everyone should learn how to code,” and this story is a perfect example of that line of thinking.

Imagine if, instead of a spelling bee in junior high, you had entered a hacking competition? How different the world would be.

Today’s three-hour-long Google I/O keynote came with plenty of announcements, but the company mostly assured us that it is focused on building frameworks that can benefit developers and consumers.

We saw a more unified company that needed three hours in one session to get their message across. Breaking today’s keynote up into two days would have disrupted the momentum coming out of a company that closed the day at an all-time high on the stock market. Key areas of the business saw updates, all relaying the important foundation necessary to move Google forward over the next 10 years.

From search to maps, everything is getting a new coat of paint, a new polished experience and a focus from every team within the company. The only announcement that didn’t fit into a “category” was its new music subscription service. Some are calling it a Spotify-killer, but to us, it seemed like a necessary and inevitable announcement.

Android

The day started out with Android, with the news that more than 48 billion apps have been installed from the Google Play store, thanks to 900 million activations of Android devices.

That’s great news for developers, showing that consumers really care. To make their apps better, Google introduced a new tool called the Android Studio, which makes developing in multiple languages and for multiple screen sizes easier than ever.

The takeaway is that Android is massive, is giving Apple a run for its money and all developers should consider building apps on its platform first, rather than second.

Chrome

That little project that Google worked on, you know…the browser? It’s the No. 1 browser in the world, to the tune of 750 million active users, and Google isn’t afraid to tell you all about it. Oh, it’s also a platform upon which to build apps, so developers should be doing that too.

The takeaway is that if you’re building apps on the web, people love Chrome and Chrome offers all of the open tools you need to build gorgeous things.

Google+

Whether you think that Google+ is a Facebook competitor or not, the 41 features introduced today will get your attention. The stream itself, which now has 190 million monthly active users, is now three-columned and has interactive animations all over the place. Google says that the stream was flat, so it needed a fresh take.

If you’re into taking photos, Google has finally integrated all of Nik’s professional photo suite goodies and will now auto-enhance your shots with something they call “Awesome.”

Not a photographer, but chat with your friends a lot? GTalk, Talk, Google Chat or whatever you’ve been referring to it is gone. Hangouts is in, and it’s an app for iOS, Android and the desktop. It has video and text chats, complete with emoji and presence. We’re just glad that they didn’t call it Babel, which was the real internal name for the project.

The takeaway here is that Google knows that you want to talk to your friends and family. It thinks that if it can integrate features to facilitate your communication from anywhere — at your desk or on your phone or tablet — they have you covered.

Search

Search is getting smarter these days. Google knows that you go to its site whenever you can’t think of something, but it wants you to be able to ask it questions naturally. You can do that on Android and iOS with Google Now, but the company announced conversational search for the desktop today. Speaking of Google Now, you can get public transit information, as well as details on your favorite TV shows, books and video games.

Knowledge Graph, which fires in little snippets of information when you perform a search, added some new languages and statistics.

The takeaway here is that Google wants even more of your searches, but would rather you sit back and relax while performing them. There’s no need to think about how to get the best search result, simply ask a question.

Maps

Getting the gist yet? Google is refreshing all the things to make them easier to use, develop for and discuss with your Mom and Dad. Speaking of Mom and Dad, they probably use Google Maps to get just about everywhere.

Mobile Maps users will get a new experience come summertime, while the desktop experience got such a complete overhaul that they’ve only made it available in preview mode as to not give anyone a heart attack. Want to see it for yourself? Check out our hands-on look.

The takeaway here is that Google Maps has been a force for almost 10 years. It was time to make the product more user friendly, helping you discover new places and not just get from point A to point B.

The rest

Google’s CEO Larry Page made a triumphant return to the I/O stage, a day after discussing his vocal issues. He even discussed a world where cool things could be built without the moonshotters being bothered.

All in all, it was a solid day for Google. There were even fighting robots. The future is bright for Google; the foundation for everything has been (re)laid out. Unification.

We’ll be here for the rest of the week, hanging out with developers and listening to some roundtable discussions. If you want to watch the full keynote, have a gander here:

Today, a day after discussing his voice issues, Google CEO Larry Page took the stage at the I/O keynote. He skipped last year’s conference and a few earnings calls due to those same voice problems, which he has noted are improving. Page even did something a little new for I/O — taking questions at the end of his talk.

Page discussed how important it is for both the developers and Google to keep dedicating themselves to technology, to make sure that people everywhere can get access to it. He also discussed his relationship with his father, and how important that was in influencing him when it comes to innovation:

My dad was really interested in technology. He drove me and my family all across the country to go to a robotics company. Then we got there, he thought it was so important his son would go to the conference.

He then discussed how important it is to be able to put all of its work on every single device, making Google a platform to build from. Page notes that adoption of technology is now “much, much faster” and the smartphone itself shows that. Page wants technology to do the hard work, meaning that consumers should be able to use technology, not be used by it. Google’s latest design choices and product announcements reflect that line of thinking, specifically the ease of use that comes with Google Now.

His philosophy can be best summed up with this quote: “We should be building great things that don’t exist.” This is why Google doesn’t pay attention to competition who is working on similar products; it tries to stay one step ahead with things like self-driving cars and Glass.

Page being on stage is a big deal, as it shows that the company is unified under his direction, regardless of his medical condition.

When asked about freedom of information, Page said that in hundreds of countries in the world, Google is speaking to the leaders, specifically Chairman Eric Schmidt, to keep dialogue open about protecting users’ privacy as well as keeping your freedom of speech intact. Speaking of emerging markets, our own Josh Constine asked Page about the democratization of access on the Internet, and the CEO’s response focused around bringing more smartphones to those markets.

Towards the end of the Q&A session, Page talked about bringing more positivity to the world, with change for the good:

We don’t want our world to change too fast. But maybe we could set apart a piece of the world. I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can change new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.

Using Google Maps today is great for what it’s supposed to do, get you from point A to point B. But there’s a lot of information that Google collects that you never get a chance to glance it, or don’t have a reason to. Google wants to give you more reasons to explore a map, and it’s obvious with the preview of its latest version. This truly is a re-imagination from the ground up, and exactly what the recent leaks tipped off.

I sat down with Jonah Jones, Lead Designer, Google Maps and Bernhard Seefeld, Director of Product Management, Google Maps to discuss the thoughts behind the revamp, one that’s being rolled out in preview mode today — seemingly because it’s such a drastic departure from what’s available now. The main element of navigation is now the map itself, rather than the search box and left-hand information that we’re used to. Once again, it’s taking cues from the mobile versions of Maps, running smooth and fluidly and providing the information that you need within the context of the map itself, rather than take your focus away with search results along the side.

Jones explained me: “What if you could create a billion maps, one for each user. That’s what we’re doing here.” What this means is that Google Maps will now adapt to the things that interest you, including restaurants you’ve been to, ones that you might like and what your friends have done. The brilliant imagery that Google Maps has at its disposal is being pushed to the forefront, running along the bottom of the page. Until now, you had to click buttons to look at some of these images, now it’s all integrated. Google Earth is even making its desktop debut, thanks to WebGL.

Here’s a look at your main navigation screen for Maps on the web:

In case you’ve forgotten, this is how Google Maps looks today:

The extra white space and sidebar navigation in all of Google’s products are getting completely wiped out, thankfully.

A new map, over and over

As you click around the map, drilling into specific areas, the screen is redrawn to adapt to your personal interests and tastes. This approach makes all of Google’s previous offerings seem static. When you click on a point of interest, like a restaurant, you’re doing so from the map itself, and a Google Now style card pops up on the left-hand side with user and Zagat ratings, reviews from your friends and quick entry points to photos of the venue from Street View, both inside and outside of the venue:

Jones noted subtle changes on the map as you interact with it over time: “The map has gone from being this anonymous blank slate to one that I’ve started coloring in myself, because it has become my map. When you go and rate places, it makes them friendlier, they become more prominent with the new design. Places now show up as personal landmarks. Some icons have a yellow glow, and these are places being recommended, for example.”

Here’s what he’s talking about:

There are now over 100M “Places” on Google Maps, with more being added every second.

“The map gets more useful, the more you use it.”

New direction(s)

The way that directions are laid out on the map has been changed, as well. No longer do you have to click on one driving route over another to see the differences, they’re now all laid out on the map at once for you:

Here’s a neat trick, too: If you want to go from point A to point B and don’t have the exact addresses, you can simply click on the map to plot it out on the fly. This is something that I’ve wanted to do on any decent mapping product for quite a while, since dense cities like San Francisco are easy enough to navigate if you know the general direction in which you want to go.

Speaking of dense cities, public transportation has gotten a new treatment with this redesign, as well. Not only does everything look better, but you’re actually given more information to make decisions in the future. For example, if you’re looking up a Caltrain route, you’ll be able to dig in deeper to see the times throughout the week so that you have an idea of how to plan out your day. The quick information that comes up in the Card is just as handy:

Finally, flights have been integrated into Google Maps. This has probably been one of the requests that I’ve heard the most for the product. It makes complete sense that if you’re sitting on a map and are able to put in two locations, like airports, that you should get flight information back…especially since Google already provides this data within its Search product. Well, it’s here now:

It’s absurd to try and figure out why this hasn’t been available to us until now, especially since Google has been leaving money on the table with the sponsored links and results for buying flights.

Visuals

The nice, but not necessarily most-used part of Google Maps is its imagery. You can essentially “visit” a place that you’ve never been before with Street View photos, outdoors and indoors. Digging into those photos hasn’t been easy, so you’ll always have the ability to click through to them within the new Maps experience.

Jones and Seefeld walked me through Google Earth’s integration, which now requires no plugin or software download. Still, the features seem to be more than the regular person would use, unless they have a lot of time. It’s clear that Google wants people to see its Maps product as a place to discover new places, plan an adventure and then explore.

The new visual effects to zoom in and out of locations is seamless, and pretty neat. One moment you can be looking at a flat map, the next, a 3D rendering with satellite imagery:

Keep pulling back and then you’re in the solar system. Want details? The renderings of Earth come complete with real-time clouds:

My favorite part has to be the photo tours, which stitches the photos taken by Google, as well as users, and morphs them all together into a “walk-through” tour. This works really well for big tourist destinations, like this example in Rome:

Too much?

If you want to try the new Google Maps experience, you’re going to have to sign up and wait in line here: http://maps.google.com/preview. I’m told that some of the functionality from this will find its way into the iOS and Android versions of the app, but for the most part, this is very similar to what you’ll find on those apps. Not much is missing.

The effects are stunning, with shadow effects, new design elements and social cues to check things out. Will it encourage people to use Google Maps longer, or will they just come to get directions, send them to their phone or print them out and then be on their way? That remains to be seen, but Google has definitely thrown the kitchen sink into the product. Everything that the Maps team has been working on over the past ten years is here.

Luckily, it’s all formatted in a way that doesn’t stop you from performing simple tasks. The imagery sits at the bottom of the screen, but is more readily available than it was today. The team tells me that they’ll be collecting feedback, which should make the eventual transition to the new design a little easier for everyone to take.

Today, Google announced that its conversational search that is available for its Android and iOS apps would be coming to the desktop within the Chrome browser. Until now, you could search for things using your voice…but you couldn’t ask questions.

Now, you’ll be able to keep your mic open without clicking a button, by waking Google up with the prompt “OK Google.” This is similar to the prompt that wakes up Google Glass.

You can say things like “Show me things to do in Santa Cruz” and get results quickly, and with the context that you need to take an action. It’s very similar what you can do with Google Now right now. The familiar voice will respond to you, answering your question. That’s what Google Search is all about now, asking questions.

Without having to worry about “how” to search for something and asking a simple question, you can get more done, faster. That’s Google’s goal. You’re not going to get answers to all of your questions, but the company does collect information about those failed searches. It gets smarter, like all of their products.

Will you sit and speak to your computer? Asking it questions? It sounds odd, but no more odd than talking to a microphone on a pair of lensless glasses.

Google+, the social layer that Google introduced almost two years ago, has evolved quite a bit since its launch. Today, the company announced a complete redesign, taking cues from the mobile experience that has drawn positive feedback from those who don’t even use the service. In total, Google has launched 41 new features for Google+, including a completely revamped Photo product, Hangouts app and the stream that people interact with on a daily basis.

There are currently 390M monthly active users over the web and 190M directly on the stream.

The stream changes will be familiar to Google+ users on iOS and Android, but have a few new wrinkles. The first noticeable item is the stream, which has been given the three-column treatment that the iPad version of the service presents so well. This is a huge departure from the Twitter and Facebook feed approach, which presents everything in one column. The multi-column design lets you scan items quicker, rather than scrolling endlessly for something to interact with.

I sat down with Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google, and he walked me through some of the new features. He was quick to point out that Google’s new approach to “feeds” will bring more attention to content:

We’re fixing a longstanding problem with these feeds, they’re flat. Other sites let you scroll through posts that have been shared with you. You can’t go through and read on more topics. You can’t go deeper on an interest on topic.

Just in case you haven’t used Google+ at all, or want to see the quick contrast between the two designs, here’s what the stream looked like before today, complete with that awkward white space on the right:

The toolbar has been simplified, looking like the toolbar you see on search and every other property. The days of static left-hand navigation is gone, and good riddance. It only comes up when you need it by hovering over the “Home” button.

You’ll also notice that pieces of content in the stream stand out much more, and that’s because they’re interactive “Cards” a la Google Now. One of the new features of Google+ is that whenever you post a new piece of content, it will automatically get a hashtag. You can remove it if you like, but Google’s massive processing power goes to work to try and categorize all of the content being shared:

When you click the hashtag, the “card” will flip around to help you discover similar content. In the example of the Giants post, Gundotra showed me that Google automatically figured out that the post was about Buster Posey, since the company has deployed its photo-recognition technology on posted items. The image shared with the Giants post is of Buster Posey, naturally. By not taking you to a new stream of content when clicking around, Gundotra says that the context of what you’re interested in learning more about is preserved.

Another example of this automatic categorization is this picture of the Eiffel Tower. Gundotra explained that even though there was no text within the post that stated the origin of the photo, Google was able to figure out what it was, thus giving it the hashtag #EiffelTower. Greyed out hashtags are the ones automatically assigned by Google, and blue ones are the ones added by the sharer themselves:

For content like photos and videos, they will get the same treatment that they do on mobile, which is spread across multiple columns:

There are other interactive animations, like a bounce when you share someone’s post. Again, these are things that the Google+ mobile apps do well, and it’s meant to get you more engaged within the stream. I’m not sure if an animation will do that for me, but it’s fun the first few times that you see it.

From what I can gather, Google wants you spend more time consuming information and less time navigating a site. This new look, including Google’s favorite new font, Robot, fits in with the design of most of Google’s other products. This familiarity will encourage people to pay more attention to the content, but not necessarily share more.

Some of what Gundotra said about this new approach to a stream makes sense. When you use Facebook’s newly redesigned News Feed, you’re still shown a single column of items, allowing you to switch between content types. While that might work on a smartphone, it might not be the best use of real estate for the desktop. At least, that’s what Google is betting on with this overhaul.

Today, during Google’s I/O developer conference, the company announced a group of tools for app developers, including a new developer suite called Android Studio. It’s an IDE based on IntelliJ.

This was a popular announcement, as the crowd “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” as screenshots were shown on stage.

This tool has more options for Android Development, making the process faster and more productive. A “live layout” was shown that renders your app as you’re editing in realtime.

Additionally, you can switch over to different layouts and screen sizes, such as 3.7 inch phone and 10-inch tablet. The team noted that this might be useful for internationalization, allowing you to quickly see what things look like without having to package up your app and install it on a device.

The company says that it has “big plans” for Android Studio.

Developer Console Updates and Beta/Staged Rollouts

After the Studio announcement, new features to help developers get their apps in the hands of beta testers were announced. This is something that hasn’t been easy before, but the console now lets you manage both beta users and a staged rollout process.

Ellie Powers, Product Manager at Google, shared these new features, including ways to make money. The console will now have optimization tips, such as assistance for translation. The app translation service allows you to get professional translations directly in developer consoles; just select russian – it will show a list of different translation vendors, then Google will play middle man. Your results will be delivered within the console.

You can invest in a campaign to promote your app with new referral tracking. It will tell you where installs are coming from, let you track effectiveness of each referral channel and then what happens in the app from the first time it’s opened on a device by a user. Those usage metrics will also be show in the console.

Today, Google announced that its Android operating system has reached 900M activations. This is a 500M increase from last year’s announcement. At one point, Google said that it was experiencing 1M Android activations a day.

These activations have brought in 48M app installs for developers who have launched on Google Play, which is why the I/O conference exists. As we noted yesterday, Google is making its move to try and sway developers to select their OS first, rather than its competitor Apple.

Android and Chrome boss, Sundar Pichai, took the stage and discussed how far Google has come with Android:

Android started with a simple goal to bring open standards to the world. Today, it is the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

The company was quick to point out that there are 7B people in the world, so they have a long ways to go as far as installations.

As Google gets more distribution through different types of devices, be it smartphones, tablets, video game systems or Glass, the open nature of the platform is clearly working. Getting into emerging markets will also be easier for Google, as its operating system can be placed onto lower-end devices and doesn’t require new yearly phone launches to start the distribution cycle again.

Google’s stock is currently at an all-time high of $909.02 as the company shares its news.

This is the evening before Google’s I/O developer conference and there’s already been quite a bit of chatter about what the company will announce and share at the conference. One important thing to note is that there will only be one keynote this year, a mega three-hour session where Google will talk to the attendees about all of the important things that have happened over the past year and what to expect moving forward.

For the first time in a long time, Google will be coming into the conference as a hot property in its entirety, a company that has many things going on that are getting attention. The truly important part of this I/O, which will be the third after Larry Page’s return to the CEO role, is that Google is much more than just a search company.

Last year, the focus was on the future, with Sergey Brin’s Project Glass stealing the show. While there was other interesting news, such as the Nexus 7, Chromebox and ahem…Q, the focus and hype were generated by the exciting future that Googlers were concocting in Mountain View. Page missed last year’s I/O, due to voice issues that he addressed today, and we’ve reached out to Google to see if he’ll be keynoting tomorrow.

This year, all the cards are on the table, and the new Google — Google Now, if you will — has to show developers that focusing on building on top of Google properties is the smart bet, even more so than for its rival Apple. Why? Because Google touches everything and everyone. From moms to CEOs, geeks to elementary school students, Google is surrounding us with the tools we need every day.

The best way to look at Google right now is by slicing up the company into three categories, something that we’ve never been able to do with them before.

Utility

Google started as a search company and this remains its No. 1 asset. It’s through this product that the company has figured out unique ways to collect and display information, something that has benefitted everything it has done since. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t gone to the web to “Google” something that they couldn’t figure out on their own. That utility has gotten social, thanks to Google+. Additionally, Gmail search results have been brought into the fray and other items unique to the person performing the search.

The pure utility of search has also carried over to its Maps product, a space that Google handily owns. Once again, the first problem of figuring out how to collect geo location information all over the world was only part of the solution to how to provide a tool that people could rely on. It’s rumored that Maps will be getting a facelift, potentially being announced this week. From the looks of what has been leaked, Google wants to make your map experience a bit more personal and social, too.

The unification of Google’s productivity tools, another important utility, shows that Page wants consumers to feel like the company has something for all of their needs. Instead of hunting around for Google Spreadsheets, people simply have to go to Google Drive and create the document of their choice. That was a long time in coming. Ahead of I/O, the company announced further unification by bumping up everyone’s free storage, as well as giving them one place to buy more space.

You have to have a browser to view the web, right? Well, Google has consumers covered with Chrome. The browser has become more of a platform for developers to build upon, giving them the tools to let consumers perform actions that they normally would in a tab on a website. This browser has become an operating system for its laptop and desktop devices.

The Google Now feature is a perfect example of how all of this utility is being wrapped up into one useful experience, finding its way to every device and OS to serve as your personal assistant.

Communication

Gmail has been continually improved, an approach that Page mentioned during Google’s last earnings call, but has become a bit cluttered with all of the other communication functionality that the company offers. Within Gmail, you’ll find Gchat, Voice and some Google+ features here and there. It needs work, and the rumored unification of chat could be a right step forward.

Eventually, no matter what Google product you’re using, you should be able to start and engage in a chat. This means that if you’re performing a search, the chat experience should follow you.

Google Voice is still a product out on its own, doing well, but should be folded into Google’s overall chat strategy at one point. The optimal experience for a user is to go to one app to contact someone by voice, video or text and then do it without thinking about whether they’re using the right tool. Google’s not there yet, and the product will suffer over time if left dangling.

Google+ on the other hand, has been leveraged as a way to tie all of Google’s products together socially. If you want to share a document from Drive, you can share it with your circles. If you find a cool place to eat on Google Places, you can share it with a circle. The concept of “circles” as a way to organize your contact list is the core purpose of Google+, with its stream and photo capabilities still serving as “nice to haves.” I would suspect at some point that you’ll be able to send an “Email,” which is just another type of message, to a circle from Gmail, much like you can from Google+. The company isn’t worried about competition, so thinking of Plus as a Facebook competitor is a mistake.

Mobile

Both of the categories above are converging with Google’s most important focus, mobile. It’s open-source strategy with Android is paying off, with 71 percent of all smartphones sold in Q1 using the OS. It’s not just phones that fall under mobile, though; it’s tablets, laptops, Glass and gaming devices like OUYA.

At I/O, we expect to see a small refresh of its tablet and phone line, with incremental improvements being added. It’s not the time for whiz-bang features, as more focus will be given to the operating system itself. The Nexus 7 is a decent alternative to the iPad, but the Nexus 10 never really got off the ground. A lot of that had to do with the fact that it’s Wi-Fi-only, and it’s possible that 3G/4G could be added to make the device more attractive.

At the end of the day, all of the utility and communication strengths will shine brightest on devices that you aren’t sitting at for eight hours a day. Picking up a conversation that you started on your desktop, finishing it on your tablet and then picking it up again in the morning from your phone is powerful. It’s possible with Google’s products now, but it’s not apparent to consumers. That’s why Google has been so focused on the presentation of its products and not just the integration.

What to expect this week at I/O

Want a visual? Here you go:

Expect less bravado and more focus from Google. While the three-hour keynote will probably be split up among different products, expect to hear some of the same messaging. The idea of making things easier for users, more delightful and accessible by everyone, everywhere will be the battle cry.

Google wants you to use its products, and it doesn’t care where and how you use them. Whether it’s on a video game system, a refrigerator or Glass, the company has something for everyone, whether they’re at work, in the car, in their bedroom or living room or out on a hike. We’ve been surrounded, but now it’s Google’s turn to tell us why that’s a good thing and how it’s easier than ever to get something out of it.

We might hear some gaming and music news, but expect it to fit within Google’s focused mission, and to not distract.

The Mountain View giant is a busy company, but all of its products and efforts are finally moving in the same direction under Page.

We’ll be updating you with all of the information on our live blog tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled.

[Photo credits: Flickr, Flickr, Flickr]

We recently wrote about an app for Google Glass that lets you share photos to Facebook, but another one has come out that has a way more interesting feature, the ability to create status messages or comment on on the social network with the sound of your voice.

ThroughGlass gives you more opportunities to interact, rather than simply share. You can post a status update, then see all of the comments and likes that come in. If you want, you can even reply to the interactions you’re getting using the same voice commands.

The app was built by Drew Baumann and Andrew Skotzko, and they’re calling it the best Facebook app for Glass…until Facebook releases one of its own:

Just launched the best Facebook app ever** w/ @askotzko for Google Glass. throughglass.io

**Until FB +1’s me—
Drew Baumann (@DrewBaumann) May 14, 2013

I’ve found that voice commands, for Glass or on any mobile device, are only useful for utility purposes, such as asking for directions or providing a search. However, for the first time, I’ve found that sharing a quick thought using the device might be useful. ThroughGlass is closer to something that Facebook would build itself.

Once you install the app and turn sharing on for it, it gives you the option to “pin it,” which tosses it under all of the pre-installed Cards that Google provides you with. That way, you have instant access to the app, whenever you want to share a status update or photo:

Tap status update, and then you’ll get the dialogue to start speaking your mind:

Once you share your update, it will show up on Facebook like any other update would, allowing people to comment and like it:

As people start interacting, you’ll be alerted on Glass and then given the opportunity to reply, which is what makes this app really useful:

This is an example of the incremental improvements that we can expect for Glass apps, as developers start exploring the Mirror API. For example, this is the first time that I’ve seen an app utilize the “pin” functionality, something that is akin to adding apps to a dock. As we wait for official apps from Facebook and Twitter, developers are trying to bring the future to Glass wearers now.

In a post on Google+ today, Google CEO Larry Page discussed for the first time publicly the voice problems he’s been experiencing. It doesn’t sound like Page is experiencing life-threatening medical problems, but it has become a topic of interest every time he speaks publicly. During the last earnings call, Page actually spoke for a long time, albeit a bit labored, and answered questions at the end of the call.

He’s addressed his fellow Googlers over the years, letting them know that nothing was “seriously wrong.” He had to skip I/O last year because of these issues, and then skipp the next few earnings calls.

Here’s his post, where he says that his problems started some 14 years ago:

About 14 years ago, I got a bad cold, and my voice became hoarse. At the time I didn’t think much about it. But my voice never fully recovered. So I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis. This is a nerve problem that causes your left vocal cord to not move properly. Despite extensive examination, the doctors never identified a cause — though there was speculation of virus-based damage from my cold. It is quite common in cases like these that a definitive cause is not found.

While this condition never really affected me — other than having a slightly weaker voice than normal which some people think sounded a little funny — it naturally raised questions in my mind about my second vocal cord. But I was told that sequential paralysis of one vocal cord following another is extremely rare.

Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself — a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn’t fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren’t able to identify a cause.

Thankfully, after some initial recovery I’m fully able to do all I need to at home and at work, though my voice is softer than before. And giving long monologues is more tedious for me and probably the audience. But overall over the last year there has been some improvement with people telling me they think I sound better. Vocal cord nerve issues can also affect your breathing, so my ability to exercise at peak aerobic capacity is somewhat reduced. That said, my friends still think I have way more stamina than them when we go kitesurfing! And Sergey says I’m probably a better CEO because I choose my words more carefully. So surprisingly, overall I am feeling very lucky.

Interestingly, while the nerves for your vocal cords take quite different routes through your body, they both pass your thyroid. So in searching for a cause for both nerves that was an obvious place to look. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2003. This is a fairly common benign inflammatory condition of the thyroid which causes me no problems. It is unclear if this is a factor in the vocal cord condition, or whether both conditions were triggered by a virus.

In this journey I have learned a lot more about voice issues. Though my condition seems to be very rare, there are a significant number of people who develop issues with one vocal nerve. In seeing different specialists, I met one doctor — Dr. Steven Zeitels from the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center — who is really excited about the potential to improve vocal cord nerve function. So I’ve arranged to fund a significant research program through the Voice Health Institute, which he will lead. Thanks a bunch to my amazing wife Lucy, for her companionship through this journey and for helping oversee this project and get it off the ground. Also, thanks to the many people who have helped with advice and information many of whom I have not had a chance to thank yet.

Finally, we’ve put together a patient survey to gather information about other people with similar conditions. As it’s fairly rare, there’s little data available today — and the team hopes that with more information they can make faster progress. If you have similar symptoms you can fill it out here: voicehealth.org/ip

The medical condition that Page mentions in his post, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, is dangerous if it goes untreated, but as Page points out, he was diagnosed in 2003.

With Page missing public appearances and earnings calls, some pundits and shareholders wondered if this was a situation similar to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs. During Jobs’ final years at Apple, his physical condition was a constant target of speculation, leading people to wonder if Apple could maintain its forward progress without him. It’s unknown if he’ll be keynoting tomorrow’s I/O conference, but this is definitely a calculated announcement ahead of the event.

In typical Page and Google fashion, he will be setting up a fund to aid research for the Voice Health Institute.

If you’re an old-school gaming nerd, then you might remember a little game released by Atari called Breakout. The idea was simple: just hit a ball around and break things. Don’t let the ball get past you, or you lose. It was heavily influenced by Pong.

The game’s introduction was 37 years ago, in 1976. Whether it was in April or May of that year, Google has decided to commemorate the occasion with a little easter egg in image search that will suck all of your free time from you. It’s good to see Google doing these kinds of things away from their normal doodle, especially since a lot of their users might not remember Breakout.

Go to Google image search and type in “atari breakout.” You won’t get to click through images though…instead the experience gets turned into a fully interactive and playable Breakout game, using the search results as blocks:

Kick some butt and then share your score on Google+:

Of course, if you’re really looking for images of Atari’s Breakout game, then you can simply click on “return to image search.” But that’s no fun. Happy Breakoutting.

If you’re attending Google I/O this week, you will be a part of an experiment from the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team. On its blog today, the team outlined its plan to gather a bunch of environmental information happening around you as you meander around the Moscone Center.

In the blog post, Michael Manoochehri, Developer Programs Engineer, outlines his team’s plan to place hundreds of Arduino-based environmental sensors around the conference space to track things like temperature, noise levels, humidity and air quality in real-time. This was spawned due to a fascination with wanting to know which areas of the conference were the most popular, so it will be interesting to see what the information the team gathers actually tells us.

At first glance, this seems a little bit creepy, but it’s no different than a venue adjusting the cooling system based on the temperature inside at any given moment. As with anything that Google does, this could have implications for tracking indoor events or businesses in the future, as Manoochehri shared:

Networked sensor technology is in the early stages of revolutionizing business logistics, city planning, and consumer products. We are looking forward to sharing the Data Sensing Lab with Google I/O attendees, because we want to show how using open hardware together with the Google Cloud Platform can make this technology accessible to anyone.

Notice the wrap-up of wanting to show people how open hardware combined with Google’s Cloud Platform benefits everyone. Ok, sure. What could data like this mean for businesses, though? Well, a clothing store would be able to track how many people came in and browsed, which areas of the store were hot-spots for interest and then figure out how their displays converted. It’s like real-world ad-tracking. It makes sense, but still seems a long way off.

What will be interesting is not each dataset that is collected, but what all of them tied together tell us about our surroundings:

Our motes will be able to detect fluctuations in noise level, and some will be attached to footstep counters, to understand collective movement around the conference floor.

Of course, none of this information is personally identifiable, but the thought of our collective steps, movements and other ambient output being turned into something usable by Google is intriguing to say the least…and yes, kind of creepy.

If this particular team can share all of the data it collects in an easy to digest way, then businesses will be clamoring to toss sensors all over their stores and drop the data on whatever cloud platform that will host it the cheapest. Google would like to be that platform.

During the event, the team will hold a workshop on what it calls the “Data Sensing Lab,” so if you’re interested on learning more about what the team is gathering as you walk around, this would be the place to go. You’ll also be able to see some of the real-time visualizations on screens set up throughout the conference floor.

We’ll be covering all of the action as we’re being covered by Google.

Until now, you’ve had to track your free storage on Google products separately. It was just another thing that Google hadn’t brought together to make it easier on users. Today, the company announced that you’ll now have 15GB of free storage to share between Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. Google Apps customers are getting a bump for Drive and Gmail to the tune of 30GB.

This falls in line with what Google has been pushing along with its Chromebook laptops — one huge cloud to manage all of your stuff. The company says that with this change in approach you’ll no longer be limited to a 25GB upgrade for Gmail, meaning if you grab more space for your Google products, it’s shared everywhere.

Also, it’s a push for unification and a nice shove for the “Drive” brand, which now serves as your online hard drive for everything…not just documents. It’s easier for consumers to get their heads around thinking of their email being stored on their “Google Drive.”

Here’s a look at the updated dashboard to check in on how much space you have left, which should be rolling out soon:

Here’s a look at the existing dashboard, which doesn’t push the 200GB option like the new one does, and still lists the 25GB upgrade, which also bumped your Gmail storage up. Confusing, right?

This approach will help Google onboard new Android users as well, as it’s much easier to grasp one number that applies to storage, much in the same way that Apple’s iCloud works. For example, when a new Chromebook user opens their laptop for the first time, they’re given free Drive storage, but that approach isn’t complementary to the rest of Google’s services.

The storage will be important to those uploading photos on Google+ though, which wants you to share your full-sized images, specifically if you’re a photographer. It’s easy to run out of space after sharing a few hundred of those. For Google, this makes upselling storage much easier, especially if someone is heavy on uploading photos and not so much filling up their allotted email storage.

The sweet spot for Google would be to get as many users to invest in $9.99 for 200GB a month as possible. This is more space than most will ever need, but the comfort that comes along with not worrying about running out of space is worth the 10 bucks for most. As Google continues to unify all of its products, that extra space might come in handy. For enterprise App customers, it’s one less thing to worry about when managing an entire team’s worth of accounts.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Google Now is a great feature for Android users, and now those who are on iOS devices. The idea is that the more you use Google products, the more it learns about you and the better information it can spit at you proactively. However, if you try to interact with Google Now, specifically on which sports teams you’d like to follow, the app will crash.

Not only will Google Now crash, but you’ll get continual pop-up messages telling you that Google Search has crashed, the app that runs the Now experience. It’s quite annoying and it’s something that people have been reporting on Google’s message boards for the past month or so. Even though Google employees have interacted with the community, there’s still no real fix.

I tried to delete the Giants, since I’m a Phillies fan, which you can do by tapping on the information button of the Card:

It will let you add or remove teams without any problem, but once you go back to Google Now, it crashes and you start seeing this beauty over and over:

There’s no official fix from Google, with the only employee feedback on this thread being “Thank you for staying engaged on this issue. We’re continuing to look into it.” The employee then encourages you to send feedback to Google from within Google Now…which you can’t do because the app crashes.

The only real fix that I’ve found for the issue is to go into your app settings for the Google Search app and clear out the app data and cache. That will at least let you open up Google Now again and put an end to the annoying crash alerts:

Once you open up Google Now again, you’ll have to go through the original process of agreeing to use it and sit through the tour of example cards. However, don’t go ahead and edit the same Card again, or it will start the hellish loop all over again. It reminds me of another Android bug, the one where the team left December out of its date picker entirely. It’s probably something that should have been picked up on during a regular QA process.

Let’s hope that Google releases an update to its OS at the I/O conference, so that us sports fans can actually enjoy one of Now’s core functionalities. Or maybe, Googlers just really hate sports. Maybe its users don’t like sports either since this bug isn’t making a ton of noise, or are they just letting Google Now pick the teams that are closest to them? Regardless, it’s annoying.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

It’s nice to see people in a power position in the valley give up their time for charitable causes. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, recently offered up his time for probably the most expensive cup of coffee ever, to benefit The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The current top bid is a whopping $605K, and the auction ends in two days if you’ve got the cash to donate.

If the “Cook Experience” is a bit too rich for your blood, then you might be interested in hanging out with Twitter co-founder and Square CEO, Jack Dorsey. His recent auction, benefitting BUILD.org, gets you a full-on lunch with the man at Square’s office in San Francisco.

Whereas Cook’s auction took off with huge bids immediately, Dorsey’s hasn’t quite gotten off to the same start. There’s only one bid right now, and it’s for $5K. Sure, Apple is a company with more mainstream appeal, and a visit to the offices in Cupertino does sound fun, but Dorsey came up with Twitter. That’s worth at least $100K, right?

All kidding aside, the BUILD organization is doing great things for entrepreneurs, stating their mission as: “…to use entrepreneurship to excite and propel disadvantaged and disengaged students through high school to college and career success.” Here’s the pitch for Dorsey, whose auction ends in four days:

Learn from one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, Jack Dorsey, as you and seven of your closest friends sit down to lunch with him at his newest business, Square, headquartered in San Francisco.

At the end of the day, this is a great way to raise money for charities, but the winning bidders probably have a plan as to what they’d like to get out of the meetings. It would be interesting to get to talk to the person who meets either Cook or Dorsey, so if you’re that person, definitely reach out to us. Even if it’s under strict NDA…which would be nice to know, too.

If you score the Dorsey lunch, you can even bring seven of your friends. Maybe you’ll even get invited to cameo in one of his infamous Vine selfies:

I’ve spent a little over three weeks with Google Glass, and I’ve noted that the utility aspect of the device is strong, but the fun isn’t there yet. It feels a lot like the original iPhone did, before it had the App Store.

In this video, we discuss some of the quick assumptions about Glass, warranted or otherwise, and give you a look through the eyes of the device in action. Stepping outside, pulling up an address, replying to an email and listening to the latest NYTimes headlines is a pretty seamless experience. Google calls the technology “calm,” since it doesn’t require you to pull a device out of your pocket, unlock a screen or tap any buttons.

The power of Glass will be unleashed once developers start building apps that consumers will love. Until then, have a look at some of the things I’ve been doing since I got the device. For those following along, I hope to have my recipe app available soon. It’s been a fun learning experience for me.

If you’ve been using OpenTable to reserve tables at your favorite restaurants, the latest update for Android will help you discover new places to eat a little better and keep track of everything you have going on. It also got some of that Holo design lovin’.

The company announced the Android update today on its blog, noting a complete overhaul of its maps integration, fully leveraging Google Maps v2. The other major feature, that the company notes was a popular community request, is the ability to add a reservation directly to your Google Calendar. This feature is available for those using Android 4.0+. The plus here is that you can utilize Google Calendar to send out invites to your dinner, which is the best way to get those last reminders in. It’s pretty shocking that this hasn’t been available until now.

The new maps integration cuts down on clutter, OpenTable says, and you can now use the feature to explore areas away from where you are currently, which was a bit of an odd restraint in the previous version of the app.

Navigation is now much easier, allowing you to go back to the previous page or jump to your favorites, current reservations or a map view. The profile pages themselves got a facelift too, showing the overall rating for a restaurant immediately:

Some other quick tweaks include speedier menu and review loading and the ability to edit your reservation’s date, time and party size right on the restaurant page, rather than having to jump around. The company promises more Android-specific updates moving forward, after updating its iOS app last month to include a cool feature, Foodspotting dishes.