Today, Google’s annual IO developers conference kicked off at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. During a talk by patronising Google+ Chief, Vic Gundotra, Google co-founder, Sergey Brin thankfully interrupted wearing one of the pairs of “Google Glass” glasses we’ve seen him and vocally-impaired other-co-founder, Larry Page, sporting lately.One commenter rather epically said, “Coming soon… Applie iPatch?”
I’ve never used Hangouts before, in fact, I’m not much of a Google+ fan (because nobody I know is either), but I can definitely see the appeal of them with technology like Glass out there… Is this a geek-fashion trend for the future?
Day One
More things that have grabbed my eye today watching the conference.
- Google+ has 150 million monthly active users. They also claim 250 million users have “upgraded to Plus”, but I have seen some dirty tactics from Mountain View forcing people to sign up for G+ even if they aren’t on Google’s estate to be social. However, 75 million daily logins (each averaging about 12 minutes) is not an insignificant number. I didn’t like the way they said users spend “60 minutes each day on Google”, it was lumped in with the Google+ stats, but included those people who hopped onto search several times a day followed by a YouTube spree. Borderline naughty…
- I only caught the end of Dimitri Glazkov and Alex Komoroske’s talk about web components, but it sounded like there were some interesting concepts coming in the web tech stack. I especially like the term Shadow DOM, which is new to me. I’ve made a note to re-watch this one when it appears on YouTube.
- GRITS is a 20% project to prove peer-to-peer (or Player-vs-Player, PvP) network (Internet) gaming is possible in a pure HTML5 client. It uses an authoritative [node.js] server topology, clever lag-resistant logic and excellent best-practice use of image atlases and packet grouping. Source code at: http://code.google.com/p/gritsgame/. And follow the hilarious guy who presented it, Colton Anlis.
- “The Web can do that!?” is a totally mind-blowing look at what is now possible (and shortly to be possible, in some cases) in your browser. The real power comes from mixing the new capabilities, such as CSS filters, combined with webcam hardware access. Awesome presenter Eric Bidelman’s details are all on (of course) Google+.
There was so much more going on too, such as the launch of the Nexus 7 tablet, the Google “Q” set top box, and the next version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean. But I’m sleepy; it’s late and California is inconsiderately 7 hours behind UK time.
Be sure to tune in to Day Two tomorrow (well, today, now) at https://developers.google.com/events/io/.
Update: Here’s the full shebang from Day One: