Thoughts from a Techie

My liveblog of the just-ended July 24th Google event. It was a thrill to watch, as with any other Google event! Wed Jul 24 14:00:51 Staying up for 'breakfast with Sundar'... Nexus and 4.3 announcement hopefully! Wed Jul 24 15:18:53 RT @google: At 9am PT, tune in for our live streamed event w/ updates from the Chrome & Android teams http://t.co/phlSQMDsOQ Wed Jul 24 16:07:57 Sundar Pichai is on the stage let's begin this endless night Wed Jul 24 16:08:45 He's grown a bit of moustache compared to I/O Wed Jul 24 16:15:14 New Nexus 7 Wed Jul 24 16:18:04 1920x1200, 7.02", 323ppi... a lot more pixels! Wed Jul 24 16:20:59 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB RAM, wireless charging, 1 extra hour of battery, Android 4.3 Wed Jul 24 16:25:21 Multi-User with Restricted Profiles, Bluetooth LE, OpenGL ES 3.0 Wed Jul 24 16:36:21 Google Play Games app going live Wed Jul 24 16:44:12 Wi-Fi 16GB for $229, 32GB for $299 Wed Jul 24 16:47:09 Nexus 7 video as usual to wrap up th...

The Android app is bracing the navigation drawer design cues from (most recently) Drive, Music, Books and Magazine. Other than that, nothing much. I must try it first before providing any (useful) insights. Guess no one is better than Google at helping us organize our lives. See the official blog post with the video at  http://gmailblog.blogspot.ca/2013/05/a-new-inbox-that-puts-you-back-in.html

Clear clues taken from the Music app design - that button and that swipe to show the sidebar. A hint to what's next in Google's design language?  

My primary comp is not good enough for the new Maps. Luckily enough I'm helping my friend reinstalling his comp, so I thought I could give it a drive for the sole purpose of testing. The new Maps is immersive and impressive. I get an almost full screen Maps view all the time (Explore view and detail cards only pop out when I click on them. And they give very useful information.) The vector-based maps seem to load faster also, and the animations are fairly smooth, given the unstable performance of the test unit. Only one slight annoyance though. It defaults to US and I have to search for 'Singapore' to get to my place. Well a more 'location-aware' Maps would be nice. I would expect an even faster Maps as the final product. Highly recommend everyone to sign up for the preview, if you have a decent computer with Chrome.

Hangouts app replacing the default Talk app.

This is a talk I highly recommend everyone to watch. It's amazing how they build such a great user experience across the board in the most subtle of things.

Pretty cool stuff here. Love how the iPhone racer speeds out of the track and gets the last place. Will try when I get my device. g.co/racer

Beautiful and clean UI. Just a bit laggy on my ancient netbook, which means it would be lovely on a normal laptop!

All timestamps are in UTC. Unedited, pull straight from my Twitter using TwimeMachine, tweaked on Notepad++. Wed May 15 16:04:38 #io13 time! Wed May 15 16:07:53 First keynote with Sundar Pichai as head of both Chrome and Android #io13 Wed May 15 16:11:34 900 million Droids Wed May 15 16:22:30 That's a bunch of awesome Play services updates... #io13 Wed May 15 16:25:53 ...plus Play game services! Cloud saves, Leaderboards and... Multiplayer matchmaking #io13 Wed May 15 16:26:11 RT @engadget: Google Play game services aims to integrate gaming across Android, iOS and the web, available today - http://t.co/o2txbQfaRq … Wed May 15 16:27:54 Demo hiccups are definitely part of the show... #io13 Wed May 15 16:31:28 Android Studio #io13 Wed May 15 16:48:24 Play Music All Access #io13 Wed May 15 16:55:28 AOSP on Samsung Galaxy S4??? #io13 Wed May 15 16:58:19 RT @googlechrome: Humbled by growth of #chrome since #io12. We've reached over 750M active Chrome users worldwide #io13...

Cards UI in action.