Technology conferences are anything but dull these days. Who would’ve thought that skydiving, rappelling and the Google (News - Alert) I/O developer conference would ever be used in the same sentence?
The first day of keynotes at the annual conference ended with a bang as Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, demonstrated Project Glass from the sky. Viewers witnessed a live hangout (see: Google+) of a group of skydivers wearing the Google glasses. It became a tag (News - Alert) team of extreme sports as the hangout was shifted from skydiving to biking to rappelling and ended on the conference stage. Each stuntman wore Project Glass glasses that broadcast what they saw.
The glasses are available for pre-order only to those that attended the conference for $1,500 and are expected to be shipped next year.
"This is not a consumer device," Brin told the audience at Google I/O. "You have to want to be on the bleeding edge. That's what this is designed for."
Also announced was the tablet version of Google+. In celebration of its one year anniversary, Google released a feature called events that aims to offer a more comprehensive service when it comes to planning events. The capability addresses the needs that come before, during and after an event.
Google spent time to design attractive invitations that are directly integrated with the Google calendar. Invitations can be easily created using images from a selection of cinema graphs, which are still images with subtle animations. Clicking on the event in the invitation takes users to the events page, where they can see updates from the host and who else is going.
During the party, Google introduced Party Mode. Party mode can be enabled on Android (News - Alert) devices of guests and allows the pictures that they take to be added to a photo stream for the event, where they are then displayed in chronological order. The page can be filtered by photographers, and you can see all of the pictures submitted by just one person or by pictures one person is tagged in. The pictures can be viewed in real-time via a live slideshow, which creates a “visual pulse” for the event.
After the event, all of the photos taken are collected and placed in one central location. Guests will be sent e-mails to upload their photos to the event’s page, where they will be displayed in chronological order and can be filtered and tagged. Hovering over a photo will show which guest took it. An Event Highlights section shows the pictures that got the most reactions.
All in all, Party Mode is taking the process of inviting guests, taking photos, organizing them, and making a photo album of one event and centralizing it to one location.
Pretty exciting afternoon. Be sure to stay tuned as schedules and live feeds of the conference can be found at https://developers.google.com/.