I/O: Input/Output or Innovation in the Open?

The answer is...  Both!  Google I/O got its name from both a developers roots (Input/Output) as well as developers future, (Innovation in the Open).  They kicked off their third annual developers conference today and San Francisco is currently crawling with more than five thousand developers (including two from OHO Interactive) anxious to hear whatever big news it is that is almost always released at their conferences (stay tuned to our blog, it sounds like it'll be announced during tomorrow's keynote at 9AM PDT).

The conference can already be seen to have an incredibly strong focus on HTML 5, as well as the open web and the mobile web.  Some of the HTML 5 examples demonstrated, particularly the offline mugtug demo, were amazing.  Can you imagine running an entire web application locally from the cache?  With HTML 5 it'll be possible. 

In addition to HTML 5, Open video is also here!  Today Google, and their partners, announced the webm project, an open web media project.  The VP8 codec is also now open source and royalty free.  Youtube is supporting both initiatives, and is working to convert all of their videos.  Nightly builds of Mozilla and Opera are available now to start developing against webm/VP8 to try out the next big thing in video on the web.

Time Magazine was also on hand to announce the Sports Illustrated HTML 5 web application.  With this announcement, we can see that HTML 5 will usher in unique and intuitive experiences bridging the tech-savvy web with the fast-moving journalism space.

Perhaps the most exciting news of the morning was that Google wave is now open to ALL!  Sign up for your account today at wave.google.com.  They've also added lots of new features and usability improvements. My favorite new feature is email notifications of waves so that you don't have to have yet another application, tab, etc open on your phone or browser.  Embedding waves inside other applications (i.e. in salesforce "chatter") will also be more common in the coming months.

The entire keynote was streamed live on You Tube, and will soon be available on demand if you’d like to watch it.

-Submitted by Chris Apolzon and Laurie Richards