News

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.