Heya,
We’re
back again with our article on the Google I/O Keynote 2018. It is always
exciting to watch Keynotes, whether it is of Apple’s or Google’s. Here, in this
article, we would be giving you a gist of the Google’s Keynote session of 2018
which was held on 9th May, 2018. During the session various
officials from Google came and spoke about the new up comings in their products
and services. In this article, we would be covering the main topics of the
Keynote session.
It
all started with Mr. Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google addressing the gathering.
Before starting the actual announcement of new innovations they are coming up
with, he addressed the highly trolled misplacement of cheese slice in the
burger emoji. He said that it is placed properly now and we will receive it in
the update. While working on this issue, they came up with one more glitch in
the emojis, i.e., the gap between the foam and the beer in the beer icon. So,
they corrected this one as well. He also quoted the importance of Artificial
Intelligence and how it is helping in today’s technological advancement.
Now,
let’s see the key innovations they are going to introduce this year along with
the Android 9.0 i.e., Pistachio,
which would be coming as a Beta version at first for a few devices.
·
Morse Code in G- Board
There is a small story behind the development of this. This
is a story of a couple, Tanya and Ken who are into programming and development.
Tanya, faced a mishap and got paralysed. She lost her ability to speak and was
communicating to others with the help of Morse code. Tanya then thought of
introducing a keyboard with Morse code for all those who cannot speak. She
expressed her idea to Ken, who without any reluctance, consulted Google and
developed the keyboard with Morse code in it which would be delivered to all of
us with the Beta version of Android P within a few weeks. So, Tanya here, used
her voice to help others find theirs. Kudos to Tanya, who, in spite of her
inability to speak, raised her voice and developed Morse code in G – board,
letting others find their voices.
·
Smart Compose in G-Mail
Google updated the look of the G – Mail and also, it is
introducing the new feature in G – Mail, i.e., Smart Compose, which lets
us write mails with more ease and accuracy. Smart compose uses AI and machine
learning, for predictive texts, which suggests phrases and it also saves some
mundane things like addresses, pin codes etc. This one’s going to save a lot of
time while writing our e-mails. This feature would be rolled out to all the G –
Mail users this month.
·
Application of AI in Google
Photos
This time, Google used AI to the most in almost every
application they could. They introduced a new feature in Google Photos, named Suggested Actions, which gives the user
the suggestions for smart actions as follows:
o
Sharing
the pics of your friends taken in your device.
o
Fix
the brightness of pictures automatically.
o
Convert
pictures of documents into PDF.
o
Color
Pop suggestions.
o
Converting
old B&W pics to color.
·
Tensor Processing Unit 3.0
Google announced the launch of Tensor Processing
Unit, way back in 2016, which helps them in acceleration of Artificial
Intelligence (AI). All these new features which are developed with the help of
AI this year, were possible with the help of these TPUs only. This year, in
Keynote 2018, Mr. Sundar Pichai, CEO Google, took the privilege of announcing
the third generation Tensor Processing Unit, i.e., TPU 3.0, the machine behind
all these innovations. These chips are too powerful that Google had to install
Liquid Cooling mechanism in their data centres. These chips are kept in large
pots, which are 8x powerful than that of the previous year ones. Mr. Sundar
says that, these chips helps them in developing better and bigger models and
solve some really big problems.
·
Google Assistant
The current voice of Google Assistant is code
named as Holly, who is a real person. She had to sit for months in Google
Studio to record the voice and come up with voice for Google Assistant. But, 18
months ago, Google came up with Wave Net, to simplify the procedure of
recording voices for Google Assistant. With the advent of Wave Net 18 months
back, Google is now, able to add 6 new languages to the Google Assistant. And,
the best part of this being, one of the voices was delivered by one of the
popular American singers, Mr John Legend. These voices would be provided to all
the users later this year. So, all the fans of Mr John Legend out there, be
excited.
Google Assistant’s motive is to be Naturally Conservative and
Visually Assistive. So, Google
came up with many features to make this possible. Previously, we have to say “Hey
Google”, whenever we need a favour from our Google Assistant. Now, from this
roll out of Google Assistant, a feature called continued conversation is introduced, which lets the Google
Assistant have a real time continued conversation with us. And, for better
convenience of the users, they are introducing Multiple Actions, which lets the user to ask Google Assistant to do
multiple actions at a time, and which it could actually do. This is really
amazing. For the family experience, Google Assistant provides, family friendly
games, story-telling to the children and lot more. This year they are
introducing “Pretty Please”. As the name mentions, if one says please to Google
Assistant, it reacts with utmost love and respect. This will inculcate the good
habit in the children, of using “Please” while requesting.
Moreover, the user can directly order food from the
Google Assistant itself for some restaurants and eateries. Google is currently
linked with few famous food chains like Dominos, Dunkin Donuts, Door Dash,
Starbucks, etc. Now on, we can access our duration of route back to home or
towards office, notes and lists, reminders etc., in our Google Assistant
itself. One single swipe up from the home button would give us access to all
these. They are also introducing Google Assistant in Google Maps which can
perform actions in background on giving the commands.
And the most interesting feature of Google Assistant
launching this year, is Google Assistant can book an appointment for you, by
making a phone call by itself, whether it for a doctor check-up, haircut,
vehicle servicing, hotel reservation etc. Once you ask Google Assistant to book
an appointment, it would run a call in the background and respond to the
attender by itself, schedules an appointment for you and lets you know that
later. Google is also focussing on Digital well-being of the user which comes
with various features like Dashboard, Family Link (Manage Kid’s screen time)
etc. Google News was launched by Google previously, now, they are updating it
with new features like, customised news, news casts and full coverage for all
the news lovers.
·
Android P Beta
And the most awaited innovation by Google,
Android 9.0 – Pistachio is almost ready. They have launched the Beta version
two days back, which would support few more devices other than Pixel devices.
Coming to the features and the motive of the Android 9.0. The main motive of
Android 9.0 is to establish, intelligence, simplicity and digital wellbeing in
one’s life. Google got to know that more than 70% of the users needed the
digital well-being. So, keeping this in mind, they designed the Android
Pistachio.
The first step towards that it is introducing Dashboard,
which lets you track your usage of the device during a day. It also gives the
data of how long you used an app during the day. With this real-time tracking
and reporting of information to you, you would be able to know how much time
you are unnecessarily spending on your mobile phone and thereby, reduce that.
App Timer is also introduced in this version, which lets you set a timer for
the usage of specific app, which nudges you when the time is about to end, and
for the rest of the day, the icon of that specific app will be greyed out to
remind you not to use. One more feature for Digital well-being is the extension
of Do Not Disturb, which they named as Shush,
this lets you customise the Do not Disturb, like allowing alerts for calls and
texts from some starred or important contacts. Shush can be activated with a
gesture, by turning our phone over on the table. Wind Down mode is one other feature, which lets you set a time for
your sleep. At that time, the colour mode of your device turns into grayscale,
which makes you keep your phone aside and sleep.
The other features introduced in this version are
Adaptive Battery and adaptive brightness. Adaptive battery tracks your app
usage and closes all the apps which you do not use much, thereby, enhancing the
battery life of your device. Similarly, adaptive brightness is an extension to
the auto brightness feature, which we already have in our device. Even though,
device adjusts the brightness automatically with the change in outdoor
lighting, few people will have their own preferences in brightness and volume.
Android P, keeps a track on the brightness and volume preferences of the user
and adjusts them accordingly with the change in outdoor lighting.
This Beta version of Android Pistachio is available at
this link. This is supported not only on Pixel
devices but also on, Nokia, Xiaomi, Vivo, Sony, Oppo, One Plus, Essential
devices as well.
·
Google Maps
Google is introducing some really interesting
feature in the Google Maps. Most of us would have faced a problem while using
Google Maps, while we had to choose a lane when the road divides into two. So,
to solve this, Google Maps is using the camera of device which gives you
real-time directions in the camera where to go with the help of arrows and also
the information of the places around you real-time. They are going to call this
as Visual Positioning System. And
the most exciting feature of this is, Google is planning to install an anime
character which directs us to our route. This is really cool. And one more
feature they are introducing this time in Google Maps is creating shortlists.
Whenever, we plan for a hangout or go for a trip somewhere with friends, there
would always be a chaos in deciding the place where to go. To overcome this
problem, Google Maps is coming with a feature Short List. Short list lets you create a list of few desired places
you want to go, which you can forward to your friends right from the app
itself. Your friends can give a rating of their choice and you can decide the
place which received highest rating.
·
Google Lens
Google Lens which was launched by Google
previously also saw a few advancements. Google Lens helps you ask Google
questions which you cannot frame in a sentence. Till now, Google Lens used to
be one of the features in Google Assistant and Google Photos, which is going to
be a part of Camera from now on. Google Lens is now coming up with three new
features in it.
o
Smart
text selection – Copy and paste words from real word into your phone. Turn a
page of words into a page of answers.
o
Style
match – Helps in getting similar things out of pictures.
o
Real-time
results – Lens recognises the objects, words and pictures and gives real time
information to you.
So,
this is how the Google I/O Keynote 2018 ended with the launch of above
features. Apart from these, Google also spoke about smart cars which can drive
by themselves. Google, this time came up with some really good innovations
which are going to improve the well-being of humans. Looking forward for more
from Google.
Au
revoir,
Team
BugsBin.
