With Google I/O last week, the company unveiled a brand new vision for mobile communication called Hangouts. A major component of Hangouts is the Google+ service, which is getting a major update today.

Among the many changes in Google+ are new photo features including auto backups, auto highlight of the best photos, auto enhance, and “Auto Awesome.” In addition, there is now a dedicated tab for “Locations.” This new feature enables users to see where friends are on a map so that you can set up places to meet. If you don’t want to take advantage of this feature, or are just wary of sharing your location, this can be turned off in location sharing.

There’s also a new card UI and exploring features taken from the Chrome version of Google+. Tags are shown at the top right of posts, so that you can easily browse by topic. Notifications have been updated as well and are “nicer to look at and use,” plus profile fields can be edited on the go.

The update is expected to hit today. Look for it in the Play Store.

This has been a pretty big week for Google. They’ve announced quite a few new applications, feature enhancements and more during the Google I/O conference going on right now in San Francisco.

One of the new applications announced is called Hangouts, which seeks to unify the company’s existing chat and video services. The application was released for Gmail, Android, iOS and Chrome, and it supports Google Talk, Google+ Hangouts and Google Messenger.

But wait, it’s gonna do more even more. According to Dori Storbeck, community manager of Google+ Hangouts and Chat, SMS integration is also “coming soon,” noting that is it one of the company’s “most requested features.”

This will be the final addition that will make this app a worth competitor to Apple’s iMessage or other services like WhatsApp or the upcoming Messenger from Blackberry.

As far as online payment services go, if you want to send money to someone, you’re pretty much stuck using Paypal.

Not because it’s a great service (ask anyone who’s ever needed support or had to dispute an arbitrary Paypal decision) but because there’s pretty much no other choice. Well, that’s not good enough. We like competition and we think competition is good.

Enter Google. Today at their I/O conference Google announced a new featuring coming to its existing Google Wallet and Gmail services. That feature? Payments.

Put simply, once this feature goes live, you will be able to send and receive money via your Gmail account.

During a keynote presentation for Google I/O at San Francisco’s Moscone Center this morning, Google announced several new services and technologies including a new music service called Google Play Music “All Access” and a pure Android Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.

Google Play Music “All Access” gives users the ability to search through Google’s huge amount of songs and the ability to play them instantly. An all new UI allows you to swipe away songs if you don’t want them and the ability to make radio stations instantly based on one song.

The price of this new streaming service is $9.99 per month, but everyone gets a 30 free trial. If you are an early adopter and sign up before June however, your price is only $7.99 per month.

Google also announced they will sell a Samsung Galaxy S4 directly through Google Play with a stock Android experience, LTE support, connectivity on AT&T and T-Mobile. It will aos feature an unlocked bootloader, will receive updates promptly and offer the full “Nexus experience.”

The device will launch June 26 on Google Play for $649. Yeah, that’s a bit steep. Although, they’ll probably sell a ton of ’em.

Even though a majority of us here at The Flickcast use smartphones made by Apple, that doesn’t mean we only care about iOS or things from Cupertino. We also like Android quite a bit too. And when a new smartphone is reportedly ready to be announced by Google itself, we pay particular attention.

That phone is the much-discussed “X Phone.” And now we’ve got a picture (or two) of it, curtesy of gadget blog Tinthe.tn, so you can see exactly what it’s all about.

From the pics we can say that the device does look a lot like other Android smartphones, particularly those from Samsung. Not that that’s a bad thing. In addition to the pics, there’s also info about the internals of the device.

Another day, another video from Google about Google Glass. Hey, dont’ blame us, if this really is the “next big thing” we don’t want to be accused of not bringing you all the details about it so you can be ready.

With that in mind, Google did release a new video today highlighting more of the features of Google Glass. This time around the video shows how users can navigate through the Glas menu simply by swiping and taping on the side of the headset to find and select icons.

Seeing how users can interact and control glass in this manner helps put to rest our fears of hoards of people shouting commands to their headsets in public. We still find it odd when people seem to be talking to themselves but then actually have some sort of earpiece in and are really on a mobile phone.

Fortunately, if this video is any indication, verbal commands are not the only way to get Glass to work. Nice to see we still have to use our hands for something.

Check out the full ideo after the break. Google Glass arrives for the rest of us sometime next year.

Google is a major player in the tech world. So much so that they have their very own convention, called Google I/O. At this convention, which takes place in San Francisco from May 15-17, developers and other Google-enthusiasts gather to discuss, learn and get a glimpse of what Google has in store for Android and its other ventures.

As of late yesterday, the company has posted the full list and schedule of sessions avilable at Google I/O. With ove 120 choices ranging from Android and Chrome to developing for Google Glass and Google Wallet.

In short, if you’re a developer (or a Google-enthusiast) you won’t have any trouble finding something interesting and informative to see and do.

Sadly, if you don’t already have a ticket to Google I/O, you’re out of luck. They’re sold out. However, you can be sure most of the major sessions and keynotes will be available live via streaming or later online at Google’s Developers Live.

Even though we’re big Apple fans, we’re very interested to see what Google unveils at this event. They do create some pretty cool stuff.

Could be pretty exciting indeed.

As a Mac OS X user, I’ve moved away from Apple’s Safari web browser and have been using Google’s Chrome for pretty much all of my daily browsing. It works very well, for the most part. But until today, one thing has been missing in the seamless Chrome experience: the Chrome browser on the iPhone and iPad.

Fortunately, Google has remedied that issue and announced Chrome for the iPhone and iPad during day two of its I/O conference in San Francisco. Chrome for iPhone and iPad, which needs iOS version 4.3 or higher, will be available later today.

Another new thing Google announced today which I’m particularly excited for is the Google Drive app for iOS. With the Drive app on iOS, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you’re on the go. You can also search all your files, share them with collaborators, and make files available offline.

That last bit is really cool. Offline files is an awesome development which makes this service even better. No internet connection? Don’t worry, just make changes to your document and the next time you have a connection, it will sync. Awesome.

More from Google’s I/O event as it comes to us. In the meantime, I’m hitting refresh on the iTunes Store until Chrome is available for download.

Even though many people seem to prefer Apple’s iPad, that hasn’t stopped others from trying to make a competitive tablet to potentially dethrone the Cupertino giant. It seems Google is next to enter the fray directly with the much rumored Nexus tablet, which is reportedly to be unveiled during the company’s I/O conference this week. If so, what would said tablet look like and what would its capabilities be?

Well, it seems pictures and details surrounding the upcoming Google Nexus tablet have leaked and Gizmodo Australia has the scoop. According to the report, the “Nexus 7” tablet (no Nexus 6, bummer) will feature a 1.3Ghz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, a GeForce 12-core GPU, a 7-inch display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and 1GB of RAM.

In addition, the ASUS-built tablet will supposedly be two different models: an 8GB one for $199 and a 16GB one for $249. If so, that’s a price that’s sure to hurt sales of both the iPad and the already suffering Kindle Fire.

Things could get interesting indeed. We’ll see what happens on Wednesday.

In the tablet world, Apple’s iPad is pretty much the undisputed market leader. However, that doesn’t stop others from trying to enter the space with tablets of their own.

The next competetor looking to enter the ring is Google, which will reportedly unveal a new Asus-built Nexus tablet at next month’s Google I/O event in San Francisco. The tablet is reported to feature a 7″ screen, be running NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chip and sell for $199.00 directly from Google’s Play Store.

In addition, the tablet is reported to be running Google’s new Jelly Bean OS instead of Ice Cream Sandwich. No word yet on if it will have anything other than Wifi but we can most likely expect some sort of wireless carrier partnerships will be offered, much like Apple does with AT&T and Verizon.

Whatever happens, with this new tablet announcement expected as well as announcements about new multi-vendor Nexus smartphones, Google’s I/O conference is shaping up to be quite the event. Of course, we’ll keep you updated with news as we get it.