The Google I/O is an eagerly awaited even every year and is a Mecca for techies and geeks. This year attendees were not disappointed as Google announced the launch of a host of new applications, features and changes to existing Google products and services. Perhaps the most important launch at the event was that of the new Google+. Google’s social networking website has been redesigned and is packed with new features. Google+ users were welcomed by the revamped Google+ on Wednesday.
Shockingly, 41 new features have been added to Google+ to make it as popular as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The social network is now more focused on images and a variety of changes have been made to its photo features. Of all the 41 new features, the most important ones have been discussed here.
User interface
Pinterest and Facebook have both made new changes to their platforms to give more importance to images and Google+ has followed suit. The layout of Google+ has now been divided into many columns as compared to the single column in the older version. The interface if more image-centric and images that accompany posts are displayed prominently.
The auto-tagging feature now tags posts and images automatically depending on who you are following and what you have mentioned in the posts. This feature can also identify landmarks in images and tag photos accordingly. This auto-tagging feature makes hastags an important part of Google+.
New Hangouts app
At the Google I/O event this year, Google unveiled its new chat service – Hangouts. This service combines Google Talk, Google+, voice chat, video chat and the hangouts feature in Google+ into one standalone chat application. This chat service can now be downloaded on Android and iOS devices and can be used on the web as well. Users can sync all their devices that have the Hangouts application so that they never miss bits of conversations when switching between devices.
With Hangouts, users can chat, have video conversations or hangouts, voice chat, share files, etc. with one single contact or a group of contacts. All conversations, images, videos, shared files, etc. are stored on the app. Users can retrieve stored data anytime they want and can even delete the data from the app.
Numerous features for photos
To make it easier for users to upload and share images on Google+, four new features for photos have been added to the social network. Auto Back-up is a new feature that automatically creates a back-up of all images uploaded via mobile devices into a cloud storage space. All images are back-up only after user permission has been obtained. Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ data will now be backed up in a unified storage space of 15GB for free. The images are not resized and the quality and image resolutions are preserved when Google+ images are backed-up.
Auto Highlights is a new feature that identifies the best images in an album and it even places the best images at the beginning of a photo album. Images are now corrected with the Auto Enhance feature. This feature can remove red-eye, decrease noise, reduce blurs, etc. from uploaded images. Auto Awesome is probably the most noteworthy new feature. This feature detects photos that can be combined to create an animated GIF image. It can also merge images to create one panoramic image.