Regardless of personal opinion on Google, it's pretty fair to say that a significant portion of technology enthusiasts make use of at least one of their products - or services - on a day-to-day basis. A large section of us regularly allow the company to handle our email needs through Gmail, and it's been evident in recent times that Google has been working fairly tirelessly in an attempt to enhance its extremely popular email offering and make everything a little less cluttered for all of us. The latest of those efforts has manifested itself with a fairly significant update to Gmail for web and mobile based users, that now offers a tabbed inbox experience with mails sorted into varying categories for easier organization.
Gmail is widely considered to be one of the best email services going, and one of the main reasons for its continued success is the fact that Google has been resilient in updating and improving it over the past nine years. Today, the Big G has announced new services for both desktop and mobile which aim to "put you back in control."
Hot on the heels of BlackBerry's announcement that BBM would soon become a cross-platform experience, Google has showcased its new Hangouts messaging system, unifying iOS, Android and Chrome users all in one convenient place. This revelation makes for an exciting face-off between the major instant messaging services, and it's fair to say, this kind of feature from Google as been a long time coming.
In amongst all of the other announcements at today's I/O developers conference, Google has taken the wraps off its new ‘All Access’ Music service, and judging by the business model and pricing, it looks a sure-fire shot at the popular alternatives Spotify, Pandora and Rdio. More details after the break.
Of all the tech products to release last year, Google's Nexus 7 was one of the most eagerly anticipated and well received. Nobody could believe how much solid hardware Google had managed to pack into such a reasonably priced tablet, and one analyst is under the impression that the Big G is about to make consumers another offer they'd be hard pushed to refuse. According to resident Apple whistleblower Ming chi Kuo of KGI securities, the search giant will be adding a 5-megapixel rear camera to the Nexus 7, which will also include such features as an improved 1,920 × 1,200 display, a Qualcomm APQ 8064 processor and wireless charging. Kuo also notes that the price will stay at the very agreeable price of $199, and the design will also be notably thinner and lighter than the current generation Nexus 7.
It's been rumored to be on the way for quite some time, but Google flicked the switch that sees YouTube's new paid channels go live. More details can be found right after the jump.
It's one of the reasons that Google's Android is often preferred over Apple's iOS, but Google Now is no longer an Android-only affair, with the personal assistant now available for the competition's iPhone and iPad devices.
The T3 YouTube channel has posted a very interesting looking concept render of a Google smartwatch, designed very much in the image of the search giant's Nexus brand of products. Running, as you would expect, an adapted version of Android, it would link up with your smartphone to supplement the overall experience by answering calls, syncing calendars, and generally lessening the need for you to incessantly reach for your pocket.
Google finally got around in publishing Google Glass specs in the middle of this month, but despite clearing up the vast majority of the technical details, two key elements remained undisclosed until now. As reported earlier, the hackers have been out in force these past few hours and have managed to root Google Glass, and the joint efforts of both Jay Lee and Liam McLoughlin have seen details of the CPU and RAM finally revealed. Full details on these two key components can be found after the break!
Whereas many general consumers and tech fans will be wondering of all the potential features Google Glass will be able to harness, the question many developers and security experts will be asking is simply, "can I hack it?" and if so, how easy it is to delve deeper than the surface. Google intern / hacker Liam McLoughlin, who'll soon have jailbreaking prodigy Comex for company, has been spending a bit of quality time with Glass since Google began releasing early models to developers. Having initially discovered a debug mode within the Glass software that appeared to allow ADB access, he then reported back a couple of minutes later via his Twitter with the joyous news that "[it] looks like root is easy."
