I’m one of those “weirdos” who still wears a watch even though Iv’e got a perfectly good cell phone in my pocket to tell me the time. What can I say, I still like watches and I don’t mind having to look and see where the little hand and the big hand are to see if I’m late for an appointment.

However, I am very interested in all of the wearable tech, including watches, that seems to be heading our way. And that goes double for what Google announced this week. It’s a new SDK called Android Wear and damn if it doesn’t look pretty cool.

It’s basically Google Now and provides you with information as you need it or as it happens in a card-style format. The company is starting with watches, but you can imagine other products not far behind.

Here’s some other highlights of Android Wear:

• Straight answers to spoken questions. Just say “Ok Google” to ask questions, like how many calories are in an avocado, what time your flight leaves, and the score of the game. Or say “Ok Google” to get stuff done, like calling a taxi, sending a text, making a restaurant reservation or setting an alarm.

• The ability to better monitor your health and fitness. Hit your exercise goals with reminders and fitness summaries from Android Wear. Your favorite fitness apps can give you real-time speed, distance and time information on your wrist for your run, cycle or walk.

• Your key to a multiscreen world. Android Wear lets you access and control other devices from your wrist. Just say “Ok Google” to fire up a music playlist on your phone, or cast your favorite movie to your TV.

Google is already working with manufacturers Asus, HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung, along with chip makers Broadcom, Imagination, Intel, Mediatek, and Qualcomm. Fossil may make the first watches available later this year.

To see Android Wear in action, check out the videos after the break.

Even though Google is pretty much the king of maps and traffic avoidance these days, it would seem the company wants to do it even better. So, with that in mind, today Google announced they are buying Waze, the GPS social traffic app that updates routes and drive information in real-time as users post updates.

The app has voice navigation, shows community-contributed road alerts, learns from your frequently traveled routes, and can even find the cheapest gas station near you, all based on community interaction with other users. With over 10 million downloads via the Google Play store and at least as many in iTunes, Waze has quite a large user base. With this, Google is hoping to further improve the ability for its Maps app to help drivers avoid those pesky long commute times.

According to the company, they are “excited” about the prospect of “enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features” already used by Waze. They are hoping to “outsmart traffic together.”

Let’s hope they can. We, like everyone else in the world, hates traffic.

Even though they denied its existence, it looks like HTC will release a ‘Nexus Experience’ version of their flagship HTC One device. The announcement and confirmation came today during the AllThingsD conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA.

Google’s head of Android development, Sundar Pichai, personally confirmed the device on stage during the conference and said it will available through Google Play on June 26. It is also now up over at HTC’s website with the following specs:

32GB of storage, running stock Android 4.2.2, runs on T-Mobile and AT&T LTE, $599 through Google Play, unlockable bootloader. Now that’s a nice phone with great specs.

So tempting. If you’re an Android fan, will this be your new phone or will it be the ‘Nexus Experience’ Samsung Galaxy S4?

Are you a Gmail user? If you’re like most people, you probably are. In fact, you probably have multiple accounts that you check on a daily, hourly or even a minute by minute basis. Heck, we get it, you don’t want to miss anything important and Gmail is a great service.

Well, good news because it seems Google understands. Or, at least they’re trying to by continuously updating and refining the Gmail experience both on the desktop and via their mobile apps to make it even better.

Continuing the trend this week, Google has announced they are updating Gmail yet again for Android, iOS and the desktop. This time, the update will include features designed to help users unclutter their inboxes and deal with email in a more efficient way.

The redesign changes the layout of Gmail and separates messages into tabs. You can have up to five with each designed to group messages into categories that make it easier to process email. In addition to the main tab, which continues to be sorted by priority, the new tabs include social (messages from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.), promotions (for Groupon, LivingSocial, etc.), updates (for confirmations, receipts, bills, etc.) and forums (messages from discussion boards, mailing lists, etc.).

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.