Month: January 2018

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Overnight, Google launched a teaser site for Google I/O 2018. It survived an hour or two on the Internet before its various mysteries were solved and the date for I/O 2018 was revealed: May 8-10 at Shoreline Amphitheatre.

The teaser site is a fun point-and-click adventure game that was built in Google Street View. You walk around various rooms in the Googleplex and hunt for clues, which are used to solve riddles that unlock a door in each scene. The game prominently features a pineapple cake in one room, which is probably a teaser for the next version of Android, Android P.

This will be the third year Google I/O is at Shoreline Amphitheatre. The now-typical I/O setup has the show taking place outdoors, with the keynote and major talks at the Amphitheatre, smaller talks in various tents set up in the Amphitheatre parking lot, and various booths and activities scattered around in between. Working outdoors is not the most productive thing in the world, but it does mean Google can invite a whole lot of people.

(credit: Zach Copley)

Stripe is one of the most popular ways for small online organizations to accept credit card payments. And in 2014 it became one of the first major payment processors to support bitcoin payments.

But a lot has changed in the last four years. The bitcoin network has become a lot more widely used, and with popularity comes congestion and high fees. Last month the median daily transaction fee—which had been just pennies prior to 2017—peaked at $34. This figure has declined substantially this month, but is still around $5. That's a lot if you're just trying to buy a cup of coffee.

So on Tuesday, Stripe argued that it was ending support for bitcoin.

Enlarge (credit: Bose)

It's surprising to realize that the Google Play Store hasn't sold audiobooks until now. Google announced that its online store, which is the go-to for most people when it comes to Android apps, will now sell audiobooks that users can access on Android, iOS, and the web. The audiobooks section of the Play store is currently available in 45 countries and in nine languages. In addition to listening to books without a subscription, some users can call upon the Google Assistant to read books to them.

Much like Apple's audiobooks in its online store, titles in the Google Play Store are available for purchase with no subscription necessary. Amazon's audiobook service Audible also sells one-off audiobooks, but the company strongly encourages customers to sign up for its monthly subscription service. For the launch, Google slashed prices of some popular titles—Ernest Cline's Ready Player One is just $6.99 for now, down from $22.50, and Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give is $8.99, down from $25.99—and the company is offering 50 percent off your first audiobook purchase. Google's original audiobook prices seem a bit lower than Audible's, but it's unclear if Google will consistently undercut Amazon's and Apple's audiobook prices in the future.

Those with an Android device or a Google Home can ask the Google Assistant to read books to them. "Ok Google, read my book..." followed by the title will prompt the Assistant to play the audiobook from your library. Since Google has a stop timer feature for its audiobooks, users can tell the Assistant when to stop the audiobook ("Ok Google, stop playing in 30 minutes.") and ask basic questions about the title ("Ok Google, who is the author?"). The only downside is that this Google Assistant integration is only available on Android and Google Home right now, but it will come to Android Auto in the US sometime soon.