Google I/O 2015: everything you need to know – The Verge

Fast & Furious director Justin Lin on making 360-degree movies with Google

2015-06-06T10:30:02-04:00

The director of the best Fast & Furious movies recently made another action blockbuster - but you won't find it in theaters or on VOD. It's called Help! and it's only available on Android for now, but the bigger deal is that it's a live-action Spotlight Story. That's Google's format for 360-degree video, which lets you point your phone in any direction as a story unfolds in real time around you. The first Spotlight Story, Windy Day, won accolades for being innovative and the next one, Duet, was created with famed animator Glen Keane. But Lin's take on the format is much more ambitious and much more fun to watch than what came before.

Help! …

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Smart jeans, tiny radar, and other crazy inventions from Google’s ATAP lab

2015-05-29T19:41:05-04:00

I/O is a show about the future of Google, and one of the best places to see what that could look like is from the company's Advanced Technology and Projects group (ATAP). It's the skull-and-bones, emblem-toting team behind modular smartphone Project Ara, and up until January was in charge of all-seeing 3D tablet experiment Project Tango. Unlike the rest of Google, ATAP is defined by its deliberate want to create and complete projects in short bursts, or else abandon them. It means that there's a constant flow of new products and ideas that could either be the next big thing or end up too complex to make it out the door.

ATAP's latest crop o …

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Google’s latest Cardboard app is a how-to guide for good VR design

2015-05-29T13:36:08-04:00

There's one very simple rule in virtual reality development: don't make people sick. But when it comes to making suggestions instead of prohibitions, we're still formulating the guidelines for everything - sound, motion, interaction, even text. It's a problem that Google Cardboard designers Jon Wiley and Alex Faaborg are all too conscious of. Since unveiling the cheap Cardboard headset a year ago, Google estimates that over a million of them have made it into the hands of VR enthusiasts. At this year's I/O, Google is betting that it can turn a side project into a real platform for developers… and it's making a little tool that will show them …

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Levi’s wants to put Google’s touch-sensitive fabric inside your jeans

2015-05-29T12:54:53-04:00

The incredibly cool touch-sensitive fabric that Google's ATAP unit is demonstrating here at I/O 2015 won't be limited to Mountain View's labs. Levi's just announced that it's partnering with Google to turn Project Jacquard into proper fashion. "We've got the genius pirates at ATAP who can help us develop and deliver this platform," said Paul Dillinger of Levi Strauss, pointing to Levi's own expertise in fabric development and supply chain as the other ingredients that can put Google's technology inside a future pair of jeans. Dilliginer referred to Jacquard as a "dazzling opportunity" for a partnership between the two companies.

And Dilling …

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Google’s “Hands Free” will allow you to shop at stores without pulling out your phone

2015-05-29T12:53:15-04:00

Google debuted Android Pay during yesterday's opening keynote at its I/O developer conference. But the most interesting payments news came at a late afternoon session, where executives from Google's commerce division showed off a prototype of a hands-free feature that will soon be beta testing in San Francisco. Customers can walk into a store, say, "I would like to pay with Google" and walk out without having touched their wallet or phone.

We've seen attempts at this before, most notably Square's Card Case. That product let customers open a tab with a merchant and then pay for a purchase by identifying yourself to the cashier. It relied on …

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Google I/O 2015: Live stream, start time, schedule, and more for Day 2

2015-05-29T09:00:02-04:00

Yesterday Google I/O poured announcements on us the way I pour syrup on a steaming stack of flapjacks: Android M will optimize the platform while adding a number of new services; Google Cardboard will make VR more accessible - even for iPhone owners; and Android Pay will try to do what Google Wallet couldn't, get people to pay for toilet paper and taxi rides with their smartphones. Plus, Google announced Now on Tap, a search system that our own Dieter Bohn describes as "fast, accurate, creepy, and great."

Did I mention the best news? That the director of the greatest action film franchise premiered his new short? Because he did. Okay, maybe …

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Hands-on with Google’s first Android M preview

2015-05-28T19:04:06-04:00

After loading Google's first developer preview of Android M onto a Nexus 6, we've just had our first peek at what's to come when the big update is ready for consumer release in Q3. For starters, the majority of the most important features that Google announced today are nowhere to be found. The very cool Now on Tap feature isn't yet active (hopefully that'll come in a later preview update), Android Pay's not yet ready, and obviously the Nexus 6 isn't going to do much in the way of scanning fingerprints. So what's left? Well, the first developer preview shows that Google has been working to refine and polish the work that began in Android 5.0 …

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Google Jump is an entire ecosystem for virtual reality filmmaking

2015-05-28T17:03:11-04:00

Near the end of the opening keynote at Google's I/O developer conference, the company announced something called "Jump." And while it may have sounded like Jump was just a camera rig the company built in conjunction with GoPro, it's much more than that. Jump is an entire ecosystem for creating virtual reality videos, and it sounds like the kind of thing that could help VR take off by making it much more accessible to both create and consume.

As Clay Bavor, Google's vice president of product, detailed on stage Jump consists of three parts: the camera rig itself, software that automatically assembles and processes the footage, and a player. F …

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Google’s new Jump 3D videos are as trippy as the camera rig that makes them

2015-05-28T16:36:57-04:00

Google's new Jump program is more than a ring of GoPro cameras. It's actually a whole system involving the cameras, Google's servers that assemble all the footage, and customizations to YouTube to enable true, stereoscopic VR. It's a process for stitching together video in a seamless way without making the directors or editors become computer science experts. There's a lot to Jump.

But the most important part is the results: is the actual stereoscopic 3D video you can look at on Cardboard any good? In two words: yes, but.

Yes, it's very good: I looked at three different demos, and each one felt …

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Android M’s easter egg is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2015-05-28T16:09:40-04:00

We've just installed Google's preview of Android M on a Nexus 6, and naturally the first thing we did was head into settings and start hammering the "Android version" section. You'll see a colorful M graphic pop up, but if you try to reach the second easter egg section, all you'll get is a shruggie. In Android 5.0 Lollipop, users were thrown into a Flappy Bird clone and had to safely navigate between colorful lollipops. Well, since we don't yet know what Android M's final name will be, this is Google's way of telling you that there's nothing here for now. See you in the fall.

Google I/O 2015: Android M announced

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