Google I/O Keynote
On May 28, 2015 at 9:30 a.m. PT / 12:30 p.m. ET, Google will hold the keynote at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. Expect news on all of its platforms: the web, Android, Chrome, and more. Fast Company's Harry McCracken, John Brownlee, and Jared Newman will be there to cover it in person and will share developments as they happen.
Did you miss the event? You can watch the keynote video here and read a quick recap of they keynote's highlights here.
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He's talking about Google Cardboard and presumably segueing into VR news.
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One million Google Cardboard users in the first year.
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1 million Google Cardboard viewers in the world today.
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An improved cardboard viewer is coming, which fits phones with screens as large as 6 inches.
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Clay Bavor talking about Google Cardboard, is on stage now
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Only three steps to assemble now, as opposed to twelve separate folds.
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I saw a version of a cardboard VR viewer at USC in 2012. I have wondered all along if Google got if from them. Of course, it worked with iPhone. :-)
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The Cardboard SDK will now support both Android and iOS.
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New Cardboard handles bigger phones and is easier to assemble.
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Yay. As an iPhone user, I'm pretty excited about this.
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In Google Expeditions, Google will ship a box full of Cardboard viewers and phones, synchronized so a teacher can take an entire class on a virtual field trip.
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This feels like something Apple would have done in past years.
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VR makes for impressive tech demos, but a big question is what the practical uses should be. Expeditions sounds like one answer. (Though I wonder how many classrooms have all the phones to make this happen.)
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Looks like this might be where they show the live-action VR short I mentioned at the beginning of the live blog.
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Google previewing Jump, a tool for creating immersive video.
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Jump is an open approach to camera geometry for VR video. Anyone can build one with the cameras they have on hand. GoPro will build a Jump-ready 360-degree camera.
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GoPro's Jump Camera looks like a daisy chain of GoPros glued together.
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Bonus of Jump: As a diagram, it looks like a View-Master reel.
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In some ways, I'm more interested in VR based on video from the real world than I am in purely computer-generated VR.
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Will GoPro's 360-degree camera cost as much as 16 ordinary GoPros?
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Sundar Pichai is talking about autonomous cars and the 33,000 people a year who die in car accidents in the U.S.
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1 million miles driven with Google's self-driving cars, and no accidents.
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Loon, Google's balloon-borne broadband, has kept a balloon in the air for 100 days in tests--a world record.
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Project Loon balloons finally got bridge mode, so they can actually extend their coverage by linking together.
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Thanks to everyone who joined us. We'll post some additional I/O stories and tidbits here over the next couple of days. And please join us for Apple's WWDC keynote on June 8.
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