Although we haven't heard about it as much as we have in recent times, the ongoing patents wars between the world's top technology companies is bubbling away in the background, with Apple and Samsung still managing to find themselves at the front of it all. Continuing with the legal battle we have become familiar with over the last twelve months, Apple have found themselves on the positive end of an initial ruling across the pond.
Google I/O is all wrapped up and done - the main keynotes with major announcements that is - and we have to say, it was a mind-blowing couple of days and the Mountain View company did not fail to impress us in any way.
Now that Google has unveiled its proper entry into the living room entertainment space, the Nexus Q, is it worth considering against the already established products in the market from Microsoft and Google? Short answer: Unless you want to pay more for less, no. Here's the longer answer.
Android Jelly Bean (4.1) has been ported through to a plethora of devices in its rather short lifespan, and those in ownership of the relatively new Samsung Galaxy S III will be pleased to learn that the latest and greatest iteration of Google's market-leading mobile operating system can now be unofficially installed on the International handset. Well, sort of.
It has taken a day or two, but now videos are beginning to crop up comparing Apple's Siri on the iPhone 4S to Google's new voice options in the just announced Android 4.1, Jelly Bean.
It was a pretty action packed couple of hours over at the Moscone Center in San Francisco yesterday, with the building packed with developers to learn about and discuss all the latest that is happening in the world of Google, mobile and social technology breakthroughs. As is usually the case with conferences like the I/O and Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, proceedings are kicked off with a keynote presentation, headlined by the company executives who talk about the exciting things the company are planning, which in this case is Google.
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.
Whenever something new is announced by Apple or Google, we always secretly hope that the launch switch will be flipped immediately at the end of their keynote presentations, allowing us to get our hands on the new hardware or software soon after. The opening keynote of the Google I/O presentation really got tongues talking yesterday as they went through a number of announcements relating to new devices and the first official unveiling of Jelly Bean, the latest version of Android.
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!
