It may well end up just being a couple of hours of Sundar Pichai eating breakfast, but the Chrome and Android head has promised some exciting announcements from both camps today, and the rumour mill points towards a new Nexus 7, a Chrome-powered dongle for your telly and possibly some new Chromebooks and Android 4.3 news. Whatever happens, you can catch it all in the stream embedded above from 5pm BST/12pm Eastern/9am Pacific.
![Xavier Voigt-Hill [right] pictured with comedian Bill Bailey two months before his three-hour long offline ordeal](https://digixav.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/image-cropped.jpg?w=730)
Xavier Voigt-Hill [right] pictured with comedian Bill Bailey two months before his three-hour long offline ordeal
Speaking exclusively to Digixav, Voigt-Hill claimed that staying away from the Internet blogosphere between the hours of 5pm and 8pm BST on Wednesday was far easier than many addicts may believe, as he interacted with real humans and went outside.
“I had prior commitments for over half the keynote time, so I thought I may as well do my best to miss the whole thing and then catch up on all the news later on. It turns out that was surprisingly easy.”
Logo of Google I/O 2013, the keynote of which Voigt-Hill avoided for three whole hours
Voigt-Hill, who has played bassoon since the age of 12, blamed the scheduling of a school band rehearsal for his initial decision, although the rehearsal was later cut short and stopped 3 times due to inclement weather.
“I knew that during band practice I would have no chance to check Twitter or any of the liveblogs, let alone write my own, but when it was delayed I just decided to talk to people and then write a satirical blog post because I was really, really bored.”
When asked what he wanted Google to announce during the keynote presentation at Moscone West in San Francisco, the self-proclaimed technology fanboy had strong opinions.
“Chrome OS stuff. The web only life is not far away, and Chrome OS is definitely the thing to take us into the future of computing. Google Glass is the next big revolution too, so I hope they have something better than last year’s skydiving. Android stuff I can give or take, really.”
Xavier Voigt-Hill returns to his career as a full-time Internet user tonight at 8pm BST. He promises to never leave home again.
We’re back, baby! Xavier, Chris and a tardy Henry reconvened to talk through all the big news of the past two and a half weeks, from Xboxes and smartwatches to wearable computers and horrible Samsung songs (or Samsongs if you want to get all punny about it). We even divert ourselves onto the now-regular culture section, Google I/O rumours, Twitter #music and, of course, Robert Scoble having a shower.
If you have any feedback, questions or comments, tweet us or send us an email to podcast@digixav.com. We’d love to hear what you think!
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You should also check out our intro music on SoundCloud! It’s Melodic Trap by Harry Ling.
At a press event in San Francisco today, Google has unveiled the Chromebook Pixel, the latest addition to the expanding line of Chrome OS-based laptops. As one of the company’s first ventures into hardware, the Pixel represents a change of direction with Google’s strategy, and the hardware inside shows that Google is pitching it towards a higher end of the market than existing ‘disposable’ models from the likes of Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and HP.
The Chromebook Pixel has a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 32GB of solid state storage coupled with 1TB of additional Google Drive storage free for 3 years, usually costing $49.99 per month. A 720p HD webcam sits above the market-leading 239ppi 12.85″ 2560 x 1700 touch display and, with its £1,049 ($1,299) price tag, the machine is being pitched as the world’s first premium Chromebook, and the company will be shipping it next week via Google Play and through retail partners, with a $1,499 model with twice the internal storage and support for Verizon’s LTE network set to hit US stores in April.
Source Google Blog
Google’s family of Chrome OS-powered devices has expanded again today with Lenovo’s announcement of the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook, a variant of the existing Windows-powered machine. Pitched by the company exclusively towards the education market, the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook features reinforced hinges and a ‘rugged’ design that is sure to keep it safe around any child, but the 1.77kg machine is not likely to be as child-friendly as the 1.10kg Samsung Series 3 Chromebook, which, like the Lenovo, features an 11.6″ 1366 x 768 matte display and around 6.5 hours of battery, a figure which Lenovo claims should last the entire school day. Unlike the latest Samsung model, however, the X131e sports an as-yet-unspecified Intel processor and is not currently expected to get a wide release. Interested schools will be able to pick them up from February 26th for $429 (£268) with an optional $30 (£19) charge ensuring support from Google. Compared to the $249/£229 Samsung Series 3 Chromebook, the X131e does not look like the best of deals, but a third manufacturer joining the Chrome OS family after the release of the Acer C7 earlier this year only serves as encouragement for the browser-loving among us.
Via ZDNet
Source Google Enterprise Blog
When Android 4.0 came out, Matias Duarte, Google’s head of Android design, laid out a set of rules for ‘Holo’ style applications to go with the sweeping UI changes brought in by Ice Cream Sandwich. The guidelines have been adopted slowly, but the apps that have adopted them have risen to the top of their respective categories. One of these apps is Boid, a free Twitter client.
Team Boid set out with one objective – to make the best Twitter client. It makes effective use of the space on the screen, providing a tabbed interface that covers the entirety of Twitter. It also follows the Android design guidelines to the dot, making it a pleasure to use. The app is currently in beta, but don’t let that deter you from downloading it. The app is stable and packed full of features. The only notable omissions are autocompletion of usernames and push notifications, although both of these are planned for future releases. The team keeps users updated constantly through their Twitter account, and they have promised to push on with development (and a Chrome version) in the face of Twitter’s API changes.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBSoOdzBig]Boid is available on Google Play for free, and I have been assured by the team that it will stay that way, and it is ideal for casual tweeters and power users alike.
Boid for Twitter (Beta), Android, Free
Download it from Google Play or visit the website
The title of this article is a little misleading, as those of you who read my posts, follow me on Twitter or know me in person will know that I love Microsoft. Windows Phone is my phone platform of choice, I would never consider using anything but a Windows computer, and the thing that I want most in the world right now is a 15.6″ one of these. But even with all the love I bear for the love-child of Ballmer and Gates, there are a large number of things about them which annoy me.
The first and foremost of these annoyances is with Zune. As a Windows Phone user, I am forced to use Zune in order to update, add music and video to and do a large number of other things to, my phone. This is fine, I can add and take away music to and from my phone quickly and easily, and updates will automatically commence if they are available. But when I got my HP Pavilion dv7 with Beats Audio, I began to play music through my laptop, whereas previously I had been using speakers connected to my phone. It soon dawned upon me that Zune, a beautiful piece of software, is one of the buggiest pieces of crap since Windows Media Player. Quite often while playing music, the song will randomly pause, move to a different point or just skip altogether, and on occasion I have closed Zune to find that the song that was playing doesn’t stop playing, much to my teacher’s dismay. When this is Skrillex, chemistry lessons can be quite awkward. What the hell is up with that? A company whom incorporated software into its very name can’t be bothered or is unable to iron out the bugs in their music software. Even iTunes, something which is essentially designed to work on a different operating system and much maligned on Windows, is nowhere near as buggy. This being said, with the Zune name being dumped, and the software being incorporated into the OS, I surely hope that for Windows 8’s sake that at least some of the bigger glitches will be ironed out.
And secondly, what is the point in Windows Media Player any more? The whole thing is utter crap and nobody in their right mind would ever use it. I mean seriously, software that causes computers to blue-screen (I speak through personal experience) through use is not right in any way. And if any person out there does use this utter piece of crap, please explain to me in the comments below why you would put yourself through it. Please.
My final point is the most obvious one. Internet Explorer. This is in every way the single most hated piece of software out there. It is crap, it crashes, freezes and is only there for sane people to download either Firefox or Chrome. And, to make matters worse, you have to have specific permission from Microsoft to be able to uninstall the software. Of course, you can do what both I and Xavier (our EIC) have done and bury it deep within our program files, but it will always be there, taunting you with the possibility that you may one day, have to use it.
So those are the main reasons that Microsoft pisses off even myself, a true Microsoft fanboy. Despite the wonders of things like the Arc Touch Mouse, SkyDrive and Windows Phone, Microsoft isn’t perfect, but by ironing out the bugs and listening to consumers, they could get pretty close.
Google’s annual I/O developer conference takes place in the Moscone Centre in San Francisco this June and, to promote the event before registrations open in two weeks, they have released an HTML5-based game – another addition to the fantastic list of Chrome Experiments. The input/output game involves designing contraptions to get a ball from one side of the screen to the other in true Rube Goldberg style. Google will also feature some of the best creations at the conference from June 27-29, so grab it from the Chrome Web Store and get building!
First off, Spool, an innovative new add-on available on Firefox and Chrome, as well as being an app on iOS and Android. Think Instapaper but for EVERYTHING. Any media: video, text, pictures, all collected at the touch of a button and uploaded to the Spool servers, where you can enjoy them offline, on any supported device ‘in a clear format’. Using an innovative new ‘spoolbot’, all data is captured without the ads. Although the bot sadly has to watch all video before it can be uploaded, it’s still very impressive.
Even better; fretting about whether that video you just spooled was in Flash and so can’t be watched on your iPhone? Don’t! Spool automatically converts everything to HTML5 and so can be enjoyed on any device supported. We hope for a Windows Phone version as well as quicker upload times in the future. Best of all, right now it is in free, private beta. Don’t hesitate, join up now. If your interested, that link will give both you and me a shorter time of being accepted as the more people invited, the quicker the invite.
Much obliged
CS
Ever wondered why the stock Android browser isn’t Chrome? We all certainly have, and now Google have gone and released Chrome Beta for Android. Over time it will become THE Android browser, but for now it is only available for devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. We will try it out when we get our hands on such a device, but for now we will read this review from TechCrunch and enjoy Chrome Beta on PC.
Digixav 
