I spent the past two days at Google’s big developer conference in San Francisco. It was really interesting and a lot of fun. I also got some pretty cool swag, including a new tablet, a Verizon wireless hotspot with 3 months free service, and supposedly a Chromebook laptop in the next month or so.
There were some very big announcements which I will try to summarize here. First was Android@home, Google’s push to put their Android operating system in everything electronic in your home. With everything running the same operating system, and everything talking to everything else over wireless connections, the “Home of the Future” is just around the corner. I’m skeptical, but if they can keep the costs of the devices down it could be really cool.
Another big announcement was Google Music Beta. Google Music is a new cloud based music service with lots of promise, but at the moment it’s not a good match for me. You can read more at The Sufficiently Advanced Dad. For now I will continue to use Amazon’s Cloud Player.
The last really big announcement was the impending commercial availability of laptops using Google’s Chrome OS. They’re gong to be cheap and portable, and and really all you need if the only thing you use a computer for is email, sharing photos with friends, surfing the web, and playing simple games (like solitaire). If it lives up to it’s promise, a desktop version could be the perfect computer for my parents. Supposedly Google will be shipping me one in the next month or so, we’ll see how it stacks up then.
Overall I really enjoyed the show, and I plan on going again next year if I can.