i/o

Apple's Thunderbolt cable gets a price drop, shorter version

Apple has quietly dropped the price of one of its most expensive accessory cables, along with releasing a shorter, cheaper model.

The company now sells its $49, 2-meter Thunderbolt cable for $39. There's also a new 0.5 meter version (that's 1.64 feet) for $29, notes 9to5mac.

Thunderbolt is the input/output technology that brings transfer speeds that exceed what is currently available with USB 3.0 (though not for long), as well as extending that speed across several devices at once. The port was introduced following a collaboration between Apple and Intel in early 2011, and … Read more

Google I/O 2013 set for May, a month earlier than last year

Anyone curious about how Google plans to top its stunt-filled developer conference from this year will find out 162 days from today.

Google announced today that Google I/O 2013 will return to Moscone Center West from May 15 to May 17. This year it took place in 2012, and wowed the tech world with a presentation that included daredevils skydiving onto the roof of Moscone Center while live-streaming the whole thing on their Google Glasses.

It's not time to register yet; registration details will be announced in February, Google said. Prospective attendees can get a feel for what … Read more

How to turn off notifications for an app in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

Last month we got our first look at Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and all of its buttery goodness. With plenty of new features coming to the latest release of Android, there are some smaller tweaks that haven't seen a whole lot of discussion.

One of those tweaks is the capability to disable notifications for a particular app. This will come in handy if you have an app that's overloading you with notifications, with no setting in the app to disable them. But now you can do it at the OS level in Android 4.1.

You may … Read more

Episode 3: Where Google has more money than sense

The debate about "unboxing" rages on, so in this week's Always On episode, I actually get down to using a pocket knife to open up the new Google Nexus 7 and Nexus Q. And I try to bring back some of that old Molly snark so many of you have been asking for. Sometimes it's hard to put together a whole show and then remember to write in the personality! I'm working on it, though.

I had a pretty great time running around Google I/O, mainly because of the food, and of course, the … Read more

Don't believe the hardware hype: Google's still an ad company

The big event at every Google I/O conference is the Oprah moment, when the keynoter tells the throngs of developers what gear they'll be taking home. That's when the audience usually goes wild. And so they did again this year, when developers heard they'd be taking home three shiny Google devices -- two of them so new you can't even buy them yet. A fourth gizmo was added during the second-day keynote.

With the focus so much on the new toys, it sometimes feels like Google is shifting its focus to hardware, … Read more

Google I/O dissected on Reporters' Roundtable

We're recording this Roundtable on the final day of the Google developers conference, Google I/O. From my perspective as a jaded and grumpy tech journalist, it has been a pretty cool conference. Google launched its own 7-inch Android tablet, a new living room entertainment streaming appliance called the Q, Chrome for Apple's iOS, a competitor to Evite called Google+ Events... and that's just the shipping products. We also saw wing-suit skydivers wearing Google glasses jump out of an airship hovering over Mosone Center and glide to a landing on the convention center roof.

So there's a lot to talk about, and I've got two great guests to run down the important topics that came out of the Google I/O conference:

In the studio: Stephen Shankland, CNET News senior writer and alpha geek. Via Skype: Esther Dyson. Dyson is an investor in Internet startups in the U.S. and elsewhere, on the board of Airship Ventures (the company that took the Google wing-suit jumpers up), and former chair of the Electronic Fronteir Foundation and of ICANN.

Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) iTunes (640x360) Podcast RSS (MP3) Podcast RSS (640x360)… Read more

Sundar Pichai: Chrome 'exceptionally profitable' for Google (q&a)

SAN FRANCISCO--It began with a mere toolbar, an add-on that gave browsers a handy Google search box.

That modest project is what eventually led to Google Chrome, now used by 310 million people by Google's tally. It's what got the project's leader, Sundar Pichai, promoted to senior vice president of Chrome and Apps. And it's what led to a very lucrative new source of profit for the company.

Chrome has spread steadily over its three-and-a-half years of public existence. It launched on Windows, extended to OS X and to Linux personal computers in the months afterward, … Read more

The inside scoop on the Nexus 7 tablet (Q&A)

SAN FRANCISCO - Patrick Brady, director of Android partner engineering, has two big launches to celebrate this month. The first is the birth of his daughter three weeks ago. And the second is the launch of his other baby -- the Google Nexus 7 tablet.

At the Google I/O developer conference here this week, Google took the wraps off its first ever Google-branded tablet made by Asus. The new 7-inch tablet called the Nexus 7 runs the latest version of the Google Android operating system Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. It's loaded with some impressive specifications, including an … Read more

Chrome goes mobile at I/O 2012

SAN FRANCISCO--The second day of Google I/O was all about the Web as a platform, and the platform is going mobile.

Google announced the stable version of Chrome for Android (download) and, somewhat unexpectedly, Chrome for iOS. Despite both bearing the Chrome branding, they both betray the promise of Chrome -- in different ways.

Chrome for Android bears all the bells and whistles of its desktop counterparts. It's got Google's blazing V8 engine, JIT JavaScript rendering, and many of its modern-browsing features. Sync is finally smooth on Chrome, and minor flaws like the absent password sync are … Read more