Google I/O 2013 Lines Up Innovation, Inspirations and Olivet University attends

The sixth annual Google I/O 2013 conference for software developers was held at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center last week.  In attendance were IT students from Olivet University's Information Technology College, OIT, who soaked in the developer-centric event with glimpses into future products offered by Google. 

At its 3-hour keynote, Google introduced its latest progress for Google+, Hangout, IDE, Chrome, Android devices, music services, and Google Maps. The company announced that there are over 48 billion apps installed from the Google Play store, thanks to 900 million activations of Android devices.

Google's new development environment-Android Studio, which aimed at speeding up code building, was announced. It’s a full IDE with an Android-friendly code editor utilizing margin previews for editing. It also has a live simulator, which can show views in real time on multi screen size devices across multi languages. OIT students tried out the new Android Studio and marveled at its efficiency.  Google added five new features to Google Play Developer Console that can assist developers, particularly OIT students working on Android development in their curriculum.

Google+ provided 41 new features, including new column-based layout of Google+, and its amazing photo tools.  Improvements were made to reduce the labor-intensive works of organizing, sharing, and uploading photos into an easy process. It aims at building a smarter social network using innovative algorithms to improve the user experience. Google’s redesigned its Maps experience for mobile and desktop, making it smarter and more personalized. These changes imply the trends of how technology is being used. Olivet University's IT students are working with trends in mind as Google’s lineup of innovative products offer nothing but inspiration.

http://www.olivetuniversity.edu/news/articles/2013/05/20/806/olivet-university-google-i&-47;o-2013-lines-up-innovation--inspirations.html

Accepting Voice into smartphone

http://www.google.com/mobile/search/
http://www.apple.com/ios/siri/

Paying with your Iphone, not Credit Card

Emerging trends involves getting your credit card in iphone.

One of the platforms I find here is doing this:
https://squareup.com/

It turns the credit into the iphone wallet and you can use iphone to pay. Currently the fee is 2.75% per swipe and no other fee

Qwiki: a new tool to organize and share your iphone photo

http://www.qwiki.com/    start with the idea of turning wikipedia into video search wiki. Backing to 2010, when you type keywords in qwiki, it returned you with a video to describe the keywords from all aspects.

For some unknown reason, it stopped this service but turn to social media in 2011-2012. It provided a tool to let user drag and drop photos and automatically formed a video or movie with or without editing. It is also quite cool too.

However it stopped this service again and currently focusing on photos in smartphones especially in iphone.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id599210280

By this app, you can automatically turn your photo screams in your iphone into movies and share instantly with your friends.

Mobile with Sensor

The website http://www.ot-2.com/ demonstrate quite the idea of combing Mobile and Sensor.
The idea connects iphone/ipod with the vehicle by many useful connections like Meters, Engine checking, Efficiency.

The programming support behind the screen is ios calling programmed c language driver via USB to communicate with the 3rd party devices.

Other applications can be fish-catcher, heart-rate measurement device and fitness devices.

Emerging Mobile SMS Ads ?

Recently I discovered a platform for making SMS ads, which is quite different from the traditional ads platforms.
http://www.zeepmedia.com/

It seems that sms would be quite effective since most people will look at it. And also the site says "You set your own bid in our auction and only pay when someone responds to your SMS ad."

According to

comScore Reports October 2012 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2012/11/comScore_Reports_October_2012_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share
Mobile Users top content usage is still SMS and it is growing!
Oct 2012 shows 75.9% of using SMS while only 63.8% as of Feb 2010

It would be a growing advertisement market and it is promising.

Yahoo buying blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion

Yahoo is reportedly buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash, a deal that was first reported by All Things D.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reports that the Yahoo board has approved the deal.

It would mark the biggest deal yet for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and it would give the company a big shot-in-the-arm when it comes to reaching the coveted 18 to 34-year-old demographic.

Based in New York, Tumblr boasts 108 million blogs and 175 employees. As part of the deal, All Things D reports that Tumblr CEO David Karp is incentivized to stay at Yahoo for four years. The service, which generated just $13 million in revenue last year, is expected to remain relatively independent.

Yahoo is expected to announce the deal, as well as an update on its Flickr photo sharing service, on Monday, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo is looking to supercharge efforts under the direction of Mayer. Revenues fell seven percent to $1.1 billion in the first quarter. It finished the quarter with cash, cash equivalents and investments of $5.4 billion.
“We are moving quickly to roll out beautifully designed, more intuitive experiences for our users. I’m confident that the improvements we’re making to our products will set up the company for long-term growth,” said Mayer in the company’s first quarter earnings release last month.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324787004578493130789235150.html
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/report-yahoo-buys-tumblr-11-billion/