Its part two of the wrap up for the Day one Keynote speech about everyone’s new favorite topic. Jelly bean. So let’s jump right back into it and go over some more features.
- We just covered voice search at the end of the last article so I just wanted to fill you guys in on a couple of extras that voice search has integrated. First let’s talk about Google Now. Google Now is a feature of Google voice search. Google Now gets you just the right information at just the right time. Automatically. You can find out the weather before your day even begins and once you’ve started it you can make sure you’re on the right track for your work day by finding out traffic information and what to expect on your trip to work. If you take public transit you can find out when the next bus or train arrives as your standing on the platform. Cause you don’t want to be late right? If you’re a fan of the giants and you’re here in San Francisco for I/O 2012, then you could have even found the score of the game a couple nights ago while they were playing. It was Giants win 3-0 against the dodgers by the way. In case you were wondering. We just used the new voice search to find that information by the way. If there happens to be traffic on your trip, it will update you with faster routes the more times you use it. If you travel for work, it will actively update you with currency conversions for the country you’re in. The really cool thing about Now is that all of the information comes up and appears as you need it so you have it in the palm of your hand when it’s important. How cool is that? Let’s say you’re in a new town and you don’t know anywhere to eat. Google Now knows if you don’t know the area and will recommend places for you to eat. The information cards get smarter and more accurate as you use them more often and more cards will be added over time. It’s kind of like having a personal assistant in your pocket.
I know you’re all probably wondering when you can get your hands on this software. Well you’re in luck cause in the next few weeks, or mid-July, the updates will start ota. But, if you’re a developer, the SDK was available starting yesterday and you can get it at developer.android.com. So you can get right to hacking away and port it to your device if you know what you’re doing. Or at the least get some of the features and cool included things. You can bet that the developer community will have roms available really soon so people won’t have to wait long before they have some use of 4.1.
- If you develop apps, or have been looking to do so, starting with jelly bean, Google has decided to introduce App encryption. Apps can be developed with a device specific key so the possibilities of pirating an app are much less likely and making things thus, more secure for the good folks out there that put hard work into making great applications for us users. Smart updates are also a new improvement we are going to see inside the use of app downloads in jelly bean, so as we need to update an app, if its 40 mb, but the update only happens to be for 12 mb of the entire 40, then you will only have to download that small segment that needs the update instead of the entire apk, Which saves time!!! This is great news for those of us who use larger apps. The best part is that the smart updates its supported on gingerbread and above.
- Now we all know that we love to flip through the play store. Always searching for what’s new. I was personally excited to see when movies was introduced for rent. With jelly bean being introduced, they play store was updated so movies are now available for purchase as well as rent and in standard definition or High Def for those of us on sweet performance devices. A new addition to the play movies is TV. You can now rent or purchase many episodes of your favorite tv shows to watch on those lonely and long rides back and forth to work or elsewhere. Also newly introduced to the play store is Google play Magazines. If you’re not really a book reader, then this is perfect for you. Google play has made all of the most popular publications available to us to read digitally right from the palms of our hands. Almost any of the most popular publications you could think all available right from the Play Store, on the go, anywhere! You never have to miss your favorite segment out of Esquire ever again.
Now that just about wraps it up for all the Jelly bean excitement from yesterday’s Keynote speech, but that doesn’t mean the news is over. We have only just entered Keynote Day 2 and were about an hour away from when it begins. Keep your web devices powered and ready if you’re looking for the latest coverage on I/O 2012. Keynote starts in an hour. We’ll keep you posted!