If day two of the annual Google I/O conference has taught us anything, it is that Google clearly recognizes the need to offer native experiences of their services to the millions of iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners around the world. Today, Google has announced the official Drive app for iOS along with an update to Docs which brings offline editing support to users.
It doesn't matter how old we get or what we currently have going on in our professional and private lives, I am pretty sure that every single one of us would love to slip into a superhero costume and take to the streets looking for social wrongs to put right. Regardless of whether you want to be Superman, Batman, The Green Lantern or one of the other spandex clad heroes, the time has come for you to lock yourself indoors and prepare for some serious web slinging action as Gameloft has officially released The Amazing Spider-Man game for iOS and Android.
It is always a nice and welcome change whenever one of the big players in the mobile smartphone world takes to the stage to announce the release of something new. Familiarity often breeds contempt, and considering the mobile sector is an ever-changing landscape, the release of new hardware or software really helps to keep things fresh and keep end-users and developers alike engaged.
The mobile app development business is a funny old game. Designing and developing quality apps takes an extremely unique skill set, something that often gets overlooked by a lot of people due to the fact that anyone with a computer can throw some code together and bundle it onto the relevant app stores for people to download without having a second thought about the experience. True developers on the other hand live and breathe through their creations with good code flowing like poetry, and when mixed together with flawless design, makes up for an amazing app.
Owners and lovers of devices running the Android operating system will regularly tell you that one of the shortcomings of iOS is the fact that the visuals of the software can't really be customized in any way. While this may be true for stock installations of Apple's mobile operating system, performing a jailbreak on the device leaves the whole system open to intense customization.
As of right now, the existing consumer tablet market is dominated and was essentially created by Apple when it released the first iPad. Since then, Microsoft and Google have been working to catch up and get their foot in the door of this Apple-dominated market. Google's Android tablet OS has managed to gain some ground, and we can expect Windows 8 tablets to hit the shelves later this year. However, in the past two weeks, both Microsoft and Google have announced special tablet hardware devices that they hope will help them gain even more ground in this market.
Apart from all the hardware-based announcements, Google is also updating their Maps app for Android with offline maps support, and a big update to Google Earth, which takes it to version 7.0 and features highly detailed 3D maps of cities around the globe. More details after the jump!
The opening keynote of Google I/O 2012 has come to an end, with lots of hardware and software based announcements in tow, Google has really managed to impress the crowd with their new offerings.
Google I/O 2012 has so far exceeded all expectations I had from the event. The number and variety of announcements is enough to rival Apple’s at WWDC. So far, we’ve seen an updated version of Android (4.1 Jelly Bean), a Nexus tablet, a show-stopping Google Glasses demo and, the news we will be discussing in this post, new Google+ apps and features. Check it out after the jump.
Following quite a few rumors suggesting that Google had some sort of TV/entertainment device up its sleeve, the Nexus Q - touted as a "social streaming media player", has now been officially announced at the big Google I/O event today. The Nexus Q is described as a device that can stream all of your content from Google Play - which includes an assortment of HD movies and TV shows - and YouTube, along with your own content to your living room screen and speakers.
