Awesome! Much easier to understand and users can now utilize the space as they please. More free space available for Drive is always a win!

New rumors suggest we won’t be seeing the Motorola X Phone or a new Nexus at Google I/O 2013, but we could see a refreshed Nexus 4.

While it would have made no sense to expect a new Nexus phone at Google I/O, the assumption was that the Motorola X phone would be announced. It’s the perfect time to avoid launching later in November/December, at the same time as Google’s own Nexus phone, which could be from any number of other companies.

Perhaps the Motorola X phone just wasn’t ready, or perhaps it is now being considered as the next Nexus phone.

As for the Nexus 4 LTE, I suppose it’s a nice option to have. Can’t wait to see what the battery life difference is, as that was one of the reasons Nexus 4 lacked it. We’ll also have to wait and see if it means Verizon compatibility. Seeing how poorly Verizon handled the Galaxy Nexus, I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer is no.

Google Babel is the rumored service that will be one chat service to rule them all. Combining Google Talk (Gmail chat, Google+ chat, iGoogle chat, Google Talk Voice, Google Talk Video), Google+ Messenger, Google+ Hangouts, Google Voice (SMS texts/phone calls), and who knows, probably some more into just one service, it would be a huge change from Google’s current mess of chat methods. The idea has been around and rumored for years, and as Google has slowly kept adding new services rather than merging old ones, the idea has seemed like more and more of a pipe dream.

Now, I’m not one to go crazy over rumors, but Droid Life has a “leaked” Google memo, and it claims tha- OH. MY. GOD. CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE REAL?! THIS IS WORD FOR WORD WHAT EVERYONE’S DREAM OF THE SERVICE WOULD BE.

I have trouble believing this specific leak, as it really does seem to be too perfect. It would fix Google Voice’s annoying multiple notifications on multiple devices, let me send pictures to friends from Gmail chat, have group conversations with people in both Gmail and Google+ messenger, give iMessage a run for it’s money via a service available on both iOS and Android, give Google Voice a new kick of life, and not to mention the whole simplification of Google’s many, many, many chat services which in itself is an incredible feat.

So is it real? After this many years of thinking Google was going to launch something like this, only to find them adding new chat services, I can not fathom a service like this actually existing and being so right on the first try. But, the evidence of Babel being real is becoming overwhelming, so when it does inevitably launch, let’s hope that it really is as awesome as as this memo claims.

And the name Babel? I don’t like it one bit, but all of the good names are already taken… by Google. Hopefully, if it does launch as “Babel”, it someday becomes just Google Chat.

Google Voice update! Not that it’s a big update, but ever since the Google Reader announcement to be shut down, I’ve been paranoid of losing everything tech I love. This at least means something is happening.

While the official changelog states it just improves texting, Android Police have already done the digging to find what changes are really happening. Prepare to start speculating wildly!

I think it all points to another app taking over Google Voice’s duties. Google is either baking in special support for its own app, or they’re going to start supporting a 3rd party Google Voice ecosystem about a million years too late. GV is going to at least partially readying to transfer data to something, we just aren’t sure what.

So is it just going to be better integrated into Android Key Lime Pie? Is this in preparation for Google Babel to take over? Only time will tell. Google I/O can you not get here any sooner?!

Death to plugins! Currently I have Silverlight for only two reasons: Netflix and xbox.com.

No problems losing the xbox.com functionality to uninstall Silverlight, but I <3 my Netflix too much.

WebKit, the rendering engine used by many browsers, but most known for Chrome and Safari is being dropped from Chrome for a new engine based on WebKit called Blink.

While I’m a big fan of WebKit, the promise of Blink sounds great, with it helping to encourage web designers to use standards, but more importantly, I think Google is going to leverage Blink to really boost up the capabilities of what a “web app” is, and really help blur the line between how a web app and native app function.

Personally I’m trying to move “into the cloud” as much as possible, and while I certainly enjoy the benefits, I’ll admit that there still is a large gap between web and native apps in terms of loading and responsiveness. I look forward to Google removing this barrier.

Also: Opera has already announced that they will be using Blink over WebKit. Which brings up the point, why even bother announcing the swap to WebKit when they did? Why not just wait?

Nexus 4 gets a very minor tweak, but it fixes my biggest complaint. Nice.

Google Reader is shutting down.

The news of this honestly hit me very hard, I’ve been using Google Reader since 2005. It’s been one of, if not the website I love the most. I can understand Google’s thought process in seeing that obviously it doesn’t have a huge number of users, but personally I believe they underestimate just how important it is to those who do use it. I sincerely hope Google reconsiders.

But, the good news is that Google Reader was essentially just a shell around the actual content. I’ll have to find a new RSS reader that I like. Currently, I’m attempting to try out Feedly, and it seems very nice, but my problem is that I keep checking Reader instead out of habit.

I can only hope that this is being done due to Currents being on the verge of launching a replacement via a web interface. Currents is certainly a very attractive app, and the fact it only exists in that form and not a web interface is literally the exact opposite of Google’s beliefs. But, if this were the case, why not wait until it was ready, instead leaving us to scramble to competitors? I don’t see it happening, and being an RSS reader is already a feature seeming tacked on to the Currents app.

I will sincerely miss you Google Reader, it’s been a great 7 years. The way I use the internet is about to completely change.

If you’re using Chrome Beta on Android, hit up chrome://flags in the URL bar and enable “Experimental Data Compression Proxy” to try it!

This is one of my favorite features of Google, and I was bummed to find it missing in Google Now. Very glad to find out that it was just hidden!

Personally, I’m a believer that the “leaked” video is legit. I get that there is a lot of doubt, and frankly, I’d agree that I should be with the popular vote that it’s fake.

I’m just blinded by how well done the video is, and just can’t believe that an agency (with such poor previous ads) would come out of nowhere with this pretty awesome video. And, while I mentioned it was so un-Google-like, I believe that it’s because the video wasn’t for a comercial, but for Google I/O or some event. Imagine that being Google’s “one more thing”.

Well, at least I got a little evidence to help me out on my side. In the Chrome OS source, François Beaufort found references to that colorful “Light Bar” on the top of it in the video. At the least, the video did it’s homework if it is a fake.

Anyone have an opinion?

#theMoreTheMerrier {

awesome;

-o-awesome;

}

Chromebook Pixel. Real? Fake?

I certainly hope it’s real, or that Google is working on something similar. I’d love to see a Chromebook that isn’t trying to be a second computer. As much as Chromebooks have improved, they just don’t compare to running Chrome on my MacBook Pro. Obviously there is a huge spec difference, but why not make a Chromebook that’s just powerful enough to run super smooth? Why have to settle?

Whats up with the touchscreen though? Seems unnecessary. And the ad is very un-Google-like. Yet the video is pretty well made… AHH! I can’t decide to believe it or not!

And a Mini DisplayPort and/or Thunderbolt port? So far those have been pretty Apple specific, though I suppose if they want to support large resolutions, HDMI wouldn’t cut it?

Chrome Beta for Android updated!

Yeah, yeah, that’s not rare, and pretty much the point of Chrome Beta… so what?

WHAT? THIS ONE’S GOT FLAGS!

Hit up chrome://flags (works in the browser version of Chrome too!) once updated and start playing with those options too out there for normal consumers or features that are still in the crazy experimental phase! FUN STUFF FOR NERDS!

There are not too many which work with the mobile version yet, but I’m sure more will come! How about a flag to swap the icon to the one without the word beta? Any flags you guys wanna see?