I am in SF but sadly was not able to make it to I/O. So I’ve been reading up on the news coming out of I/O.
Here, in no particular order, are the things that I am most excited about or thinking the most about:
1) Smart notifications. Many times the top of my screen gets filled with Twitter notifications (I get notifications whenever my daughters and my partners and my wife tweet), and so I don’t see my Kik notifications unless I swipe down to see all my notifications. I would like a mobile OS that looks at what notifications generate the most reliable and immediate reactions from me and put those front and center for me. The notification channel is becoming more and more like email and Google is well positioned to bring some of the smarts it has brought to email to mobile notifications.
2) Android mirroring on Chromecast. I have been so jealous of entrepreneurs walking into USV with only an iPhone, mirroring it to our conference room displays via Airplay, and doing their pitch on their phone. As an Android user, I have not been able to do that. We have both Chromecast and Airplay in our conference rooms at USV. Now Android users will not be second citizens. Yesssss.
3) In app data available in web search. This is a big one. When I search on mobile web for a restaurant, I’d sure like to see a Foursquare result come up if I’ve got the Foursquare app on my phone. Same with Tweets, Songs on SoundCloud, Movies on Fandango, etc, etc.
4) Wear, Car, TV. Google is trying to get Android everywhere. Just like Apple is trying to be everywhere. Regular readers know that I’m a bigger fan of “casting” your phone onto your car, watch, TV, than running apps and such on the devices. We will see how far Google is going in terms of putting smarts on these devices vs making Android phones control these devices. I prefer the latter approach myself.
But, as I said, I was not there. Benedict Evans was and here’s a 30 min podcast where he shares his impressions.
