Introducing Google Drive

After months of rumours, Google have finally announced Google Drive. Could this be the first real Dropbox competitor?

The Google blog outlines the following new features:

• Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.

• Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.

• Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.

The storage options are also competitive, starting at 5GB (for free), with options for 25GB ($2.49pm) and 100GB ($4.99pm). Any storage increases will also benefit your other Google accounts, such as Google Mail and Picasa.

Overall the service looks great and it will be interesting to see how Dropbox (the current king) responds.

Introducing Project Glass

We've all seen sci-fi movies where the actors run around with wearable tech. Well it looks like Google are going to attempt to make this a reality with Project Glass.

They recently unveiled a pair of augmented reality glasses that offer many of the features you currently find on a smartphone, such as note taking, search, navigation and video conferencing.

The glasses have a single viewer (heads up display), are battery powered and include a microphone and camera. Google also released a concept video that demonstrates what the user experience could look like.

As with all concepts the final version (expected to be released in 2012) will probably look quite different, but an early prototype has already been spotted in public, worn by Google co-founder Sergey Brinseen.

It's unclear if the unit was operational, or just for show. However it's a nice bit of PR and does give credence that this is a real product and not just vaporware.

So are you ready for wearable tech? Personally I can see myself using a more subtle sports band (like Jawbone Up or the Nike FuelBand), but I'm not sure I'm quite ready for full on headware! With that said, once all the cool kids start wearing them I'm sure they will quickly become the next must-have gadget.

Introducing Google Play

As anyone who reads LifeinTECH will know, I'm a big fan of Google Music, the cloud based music service that rivals Apple's iTunes Match. Over the past few months I have migrated my music to the service and now have access to my entire library from anywhere in the world.

Today Google announced a major re-brand, bringing all of their cloud services under one umbrella, known as Google Play. This includes the existing Android Market, Google Music, Google Books and lesser known video offerings. The new logos and naming conventions can be seen below.

I assume this change is a direct reaction to the Apple iCloud, making Google's cloud services feel like a unified platform that will bring better brand awareness and can be clearly positioned as a unique selling point of Google products such as Android and Chrome. 

Thanks to the magic of the Internet the new brand has already gone live, as can be seen by logging into Google Music, or Play Music as it will now be known.

Google also released a new promotion video, that based on the voiceover could easily be advertising Apple's iCloud, as it highlights the ability to instantly purchase and synchronise content across devices.

Overall I think this change makes a lot of sense and hopefully confirms that Play Music is here to stay. Expect to see the other Google Services such as the Android Marketplace begin to automatically transition to the new brand over the next few weeks.

Chrome Beta for Android

Today Google launched the long rumoured Chrome for Android. This new release brings Google's desktop browser to their mobile platform for the first time, creating synergy across their product range (like Apple with Safari).

Chrome for Android is currently still in beta, however it is available to everyone for free from the Android Marketplace. At this time it does not replace the existing Android browser, but I would expect it to become the default in a future Android release.

Although it is still early days for the browser it's already boasting some interesting new features, for example a new user interface, better tab management (that looks a lot like cards from webOS), bookmark and tab synchronisation, incognito windows and Link Preview (that makes it easier to select the right link in a densely-populated area of a page).

Users of the desktop version of Chrome will be familiar with most of these features, but it's great to see that Google have spent time customising them for the mobile environment.

Chrome for Android stands out as another major milestone for the platform, which for users of Google services (like me) makes Android an increasingly compelling product. For more information on Chrome for Android head over to The Verge, where they have a full preview, including performance results.

Download from Google Music

I've been using Google Music since it was made available several months ago. In my opinion the service works great, offering a clean user interface and instant streaming to just about any device with a browser. One limitation that had previously concerned me was the inability to download your music back from the cloud (unless you had an Android device). As a result I was never willing to delete my local content, just in case Google ever decided to the end their cloud music experiment. Thankfully, in a recent silent update, Google have rectified this concern.

When logged into Google Music (via the browser) you can now highlight any album or song and select "download". This will immediately start downloading your music as 320kbps MP3 files (not bad at all).

Cloud services offer so many advantages, however it's a little scary if you have no way of getting your data back. Let's hope Google (and others) continue to make the "download option" readily available.