Today at Google’s I/O, Vic Gundotra had some pretty neat surprises for us -41 new features in fact. He covered them within 3 major areas – Stream, Hangouts and Images.

THE STREAM

Google Plus is rolling out a newly designed stream to its desktop site today. Vic mentions that today’s news feeds among different social networks are extremely flat. With the new design, Google+ will display a dynamic card like design theme. This dynamic display will allow up to three columns depending on the size of your screen. Not only will the Google+ stream automatically choose how many columns to display (either 1, 2 or 3), but it will also let you choose.

Google also introduces a new feature called …

In education, There is a huge difference between what is possible and what is practical. It’s Google’s job to fix this

Google believes every student should have access to a tablet. Hence they have come out with the Google Play for Education initiative to mass deploy educative material to students. This material will be available in the form of Apps, Books and Videos and will be organised by subjects matter and grade level.

In schools that use Google Play for Education, every student will have a Google account. Upon selecting the required app, it will then be downloaded instantly onto their tablets. This means sending applications to entire grades of students with a single click.

Google believes that they will …

It has long been expected that Google would be introducing a new instant messaging service. The service has now been officially announced and we have all the details.

The new Google Hangouts is available today on Android and Chrome. It is basically the same as any other major instant messaging service, like WhatsApp, Viber and the likes. However, Google Hangouts comes out with trumps in one major area – it is not confined to any OS or form of computing. Google Hangouts for mobile and the web will give you the exact same experience.

Hangouts runs through your Gmail or Google account, so if you’ve got one of them (who doesn’t?) then you can instantly start chatting. You can do …

It’s official! No sooner than the rumours emerged that Samsung were looking at releasing an AOSP version of their flagship Galaxy S4, this morning at Google I/O, Google’s VP of Android Product Management, Hugo Barra announced an AOSP Galaxy S4 running Android 4.2.2.

This Galaxy S4 will differ in a big way from Samsung’s own Galaxy S4 – as mentioned it will be completely AOSP and stock Android, and like a true Nexus it will be available with an unlocked bootloader. This, like we stated yesterday provides individuals with the perfect solution if they desire a Galaxy S4, but aren’t fond of Samsung’s TouchWiz skin. Furthermore, users will stand to benefit from receiving timely updates, like all Nexus devices.

Barra …

Google has opted to take on music streaming services like Spotify, RDIO, MOG and others with a streaming service of Google Play as the second generation of the service. It is now no longer an online music locker and store, but also a streaming service.

The service is able to stream songs and create somewhat of a ‘radio station’ based on a certain song that you are currently listening to. I’d assume that it also takes cues from other recommendations and music you currently listen to. It is, supposedly, a radio without rules.

A service called ‘Explore’ also provides a new ‘guided’ way to browse millions of tracks and personalised recommendations.

Google ‘Listen Now’ uses the power of Google to …

Google’s application and content distribution network called Google Play has almost reached the elusive 50 billion app download level. Google has today announced that the Play Store has hit 48 billion downloads.

Hugo Barra, Google’s Android Product Manager also said:

Revenue per user is … two and a half times what it used to be a year ago globally.

Paid out more money to Android developers on Google Play than all of last year.

With the latest redesign of the Google Play Store app on Android, I’m sure Android app downloads on Play have skyrocketed and we’ll be seeing these numbers climb higher and higher.

Well, well – what do you know. Google has a lot of cool stuff to tell us at the Google I/O event which is currently being streamed live over on YouTube.

Anyway, Google has now told everyone that Android has reached the absolutely incredible benchmark of having 900 million active devices. That means that about 13% of the entire world’s population is currently using Android – wow.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Acer pop-up store in Bondi Junction and put down my debit card for an Iconia W511, a convertible tablet in the style of the Asus Transformer series, but running Windows 8 and with a SIM slot for 3G connectivity. It didn’t have to be this way. In a parallel universe, I would have bought a Chromebook or a Nexus 10 and I would’ve thrived in the growing ecosystem of Android or Chrome OS apps. In the end, however, I made the purchasing decision I did because, based on what’s happened in the tech industry lately, I came to this realisation: that Google has shown no long-term interest in letting me …

Google’s Play Store was only just updated to bring users the new Holo look that came with the introduction of v4.0. The new version, which is currently rolling out, updates the client to v4.1.6.

Image source: AndroidOS

Appearance-wise, the main changes appear as soon as you open up the new application. The content button’s have switched from having a pure white (left picture) background, to a colourful (right picture) one, which matches its content. You will also notice that the old black background for the settings and menu items sections have changed to the holo design.

‘My Wishlist’ has become more consistent with the updated Play Store, in that it now displays all items in the card grid format, rather …

With only hours to go until Google’s I/O, excitement is starting to become a constant thing. We finally get to see what Google has in store for us!

For years, Apple has lead the way when it comes to an online musical catalogue. Though, with Google launching their own music service on the 16th of November 2011, people began to wonder whether iTunes may ever fall back into second place. Although Google Music still hasn’t caught up to the iTunes giant, it is expected that Google will go one up on Apple at tomorrows I/O.

Earlier in the year Fortune reported that Google had inked a deal with Warner Music Group, which is one of the three major record companies, …

Do you love your stock Android over OEM skins, but want a smartphone with internals up there with the major flagship devices? Well as one of the tech industry’s most anticipated events is ready to swing into action, we’re receiving the last round of rumours before Google I/O kicks off.

This time, it’s the speculation that Samsung is preparing to unveil the Galaxy S4 “Google Edition” at the conference. Why would Samsung do this you say? Well there are many of us out there who are fond of the Galaxy S4 but absolutely detest Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay. Instead of going through all the effort to unlock and root your device to put on an AOSP ROM, talks are that Samsung …

You know that when Google I/O is only days away and the company begins to roll out updates to their applications, that it’s going to get people’s attention. Well, the current update to ‘Google Play Services’, from v3.0.27 to v3.1.36 , is no exception. Ron Amadeo over at AP has done his usual teardown on the APK and has found some exciting additions to the app, including the up-and-coming Google ‘Play Games’.

Play Games

Google Play Games is a new service which is expected to be announced at Google’s I/O. We have heard rumours floating around about what Google Play Games actually is, but now we all but have proof. Play Games will include a bunch of different features including …