The Verge - Google I/O 2012: everything you need to know

The Nexus 7's most important price is £159, not $199

2012-06-28T14:00:47Z

It's been evident for a good long while now that Google's big announcement at I/O 2012 was going to be an Android tablet to do battle with Amazon's Kindle Fire. Whether you were asking anonymous Asus executives, upstream component makers, or Andy Rubin himself, Google's mission over the past few months has been to reassert itself in the tablet marketplace — and the Nexus 7 shows that the strategy chosen for doing so has been to assault the low end of the pricing scale.

Hands-on with new Google+ tablet app and events features (video)

2012-06-28T13:32:04Z

Google certainly had plenty to show us at I/O today, but hidden in there were some major improvements to Google+, including the first-ever tablet app for the social network and an all-new Events feature. While it may have been overshadowed by an insane Project Glass demo, this is actually one of the more significant updates to Google+ that we have seen. Today's also the social network's first birthday, so join us for a look at what's changed and what's new if you're feeling a bit sentimental.

Google Nexus Q media streamer: first impressions and video

2012-06-28T07:26:23Z

One of Google's surprises yesterday was the Nexus Q media streamer, a product that sees the company expanding into the living room with its own branded hardware. The Nexus Q differs from competing devices in that it only serves as a conduit. It has no UI of its own; you control the Q with your Android smartphone or tablet, and the sphere then streams audio and video content down from the Google Play Store (it can also be used to route YouTube content to your television). We spent some time with the device today, and while there are some nice stylistic touches, we did find the device to be somewhat lacking in its feature set and ease of use.

The Q comes in a two-piece cardboard box, packed with a thin instruction pamphlet and a power...

Nexus 7 Guidebook available now on Google Play Books

2012-06-28T07:18:01Z

Google had a lot to announce at its I/O keynote yesterday, but if it's all been too much to take in then this could be a solution of sorts — a guidebook to the new Nexus 7 tablet on Google Play. The 84-page tome isn't just restricted to those interested in the Asus slate, however, as it acts as an introductory guide to the Android platform and Jelly Bean in particular.

Now, admittedly you'll probably want an Android device to download and read the book in the first place, but even experienced users might find it useful to delve into the new Jelly Bean features. For others considering the Nexus 7 as their first Android device, it might make for an appropriate way to test the device's capabilities as a reader. It's available now in...

New Google Drive SDK supports third-party Android and iOS apps

2012-06-28T06:38:43Z

One of the many rumors we heard about Google Drive before the cloud storage service's eventual release was support for third-party app integration via a software development kit. That didn't come to pass in the first version of the SDK, but that all changes today with version 2 — developers can now integrate Google Drive into their apps for both Android and iOS devices. Apps developed with the new SDK will let users view, edit, and upload files with Google Drive.

Until now Dropbox has been the most visible player in this space, with Apple's recent introduction of iCloud also gaining some support. Google has also given a few new compatibility features to web apps, including an embeddable sharing component and the ability to open Drive...

PlayCanvas HTML5 game creation toolset aims to speed up development

2012-06-28T04:32:52Z

HTML5 game development could be one of the hot topics of Google I/O. Yesterday we got word of Strike Fortress, a technically impressive multiplayer title from EA, and today a new team has announced a set of development tools designed to help create HTML5 games quickly and easily. PlayCanvas, started by former developers from Sony and Activision, provides a collaborative environment specifically for building browser-based 3D games.

The drawback right now is that PlayCanvas games currently won't work in mobile browsers like Chrome for Android and Safari on iOS. This is because those browsers don't yet support WebGL, though the team expects mobile support to "improve in the coming months." The current demos are definitely on the simple...

Google+ gets new History API for third-party app and site integration

2012-06-28T03:18:02Z

Facebook users are used to having third-party applications and services post to their stream, and now Google+ is getting its strategy in place to do the same thing. VentureBeat spoke with Google's Louis Gray who explained that the History API will allow third-party services like Twitter and Foursquare to privately save events, known as "moments," to a given user's Google+ profile, at which point they can choose to share the events on their Google+ profile. While the History API will help bring Google+ to parity with Facebook's frictionless sharing, it could also allow Google+ users to help populate their profiles, no doubt encouraging users to stick with the service which has struggled to catch on with mainstream users. The History API...

Google's Web Lab puts interactive Chrome installations in the London Science Museum

2012-06-28T00:44:03Z

Here's another intriguing project to come out of this year's Google I/O: the company has announced Web Lab, a series of installations that will let visitors "see the magic of the web brought to life through five Chrome experiments." The installations will be on display at the Science Museum in London for a year, but you won't have to be in the UK to participate — you can interact with them from wherever you are at the Chrome Web Lab website. Installations include collaborative music-making, a way to see "where images on the web live," and a robot that translates uploaded images into pictures drawn in sand. The project is launching "in beta" this summer, but for now you can check out a teaser video below.