geekosystem

We don't know a lot about the Google-built media player, other than the fact that Google made it, and it's a media player, but the device's FCC filing does reveal one interesting tidbit: The model number is H2G2-42. Yeah, you're not seeing things, it's absolutely a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Someone has a sense of humor, or we're getting a really awesome media player at some point.

People really seem to enjoy music, so Google figured they'd get a little more involved in the music scene. They just announced the cumbersomely named Google Play Music All Access. They were pretty sparse with details, but All Access appears to be for all intents and purposes Google's version of Spotify.

Google's I/O developers conference goes live from San Francisco later this afternoon. If you want to know what the company has planned for the coming year -- and let's face it, you totally do, because whether you like it or hate it, it's going to have a lot of impact -- you're going to want to be tuned in, and we've got you covered with the live stream starting at noon ET/9am PT today. 

If you have a few minutes to kill, might we suggest typing "Atari Breakout" into Google Image Search? It will return images of the classic game, but after a few seconds those images will change into blocks, and your computer will beep and boop at you as the screen is transformed into the Atari classic Breakout. Google doesn't want anyone getting any work done today.

It's silly to have multiple storage locations for your various Google products, and Google seems to have finally realized that. They've combined user storage between Gmail, Drive, and Google+ to give you 15 GB of combined storage in one common place. At the very least, that's convenient for users, but if you're like me and don't use a lot of space with Gmail or Google+ then Google just upgraded your Drive account to 15 GB for free. Hooray!

I'm willing to bet that a lot of our readers fall into the role of tech support for their friends and family. I know I do. Fixing your mom's computer just got a little easier thanks to a new Google Hangouts remote desktop feature that lets you take control of another system through the chat service. The problem now is, how am I going to explain setting up a Google Hangout to my mother?

Though earlier reports said that Google Glass would be commercially available by the end of this year, it seems like we're going to have to wait longer before we can walk around looking like super cool cyborgs. Eric Schmidt said in an interview that Glass would not be available to the public until some time next year. The bright side is now you have more time to save up $1,500 to buy a pair.

In case you have a blog on Blogger, not that I'm saying you should, Google's rolled out a new feature where you can active Google+ comments on your Blogger blog. These work in much the same way as Facebook's commenting system does on third-party sites, so it's clear that Google's starting to eye that part of the market with a little more interest.

Well, Google didn't exactly give Austin a whole lot of time to bask in the afterglow of being the next city with Google Fiber. Yesterday afternoon, Google announced on its official blog that Provo, Utah will be the third U.S. city to benefit from the company's new high-speed Internet service.

We've still got details coming in on today's bombing at the Boston Marathon, but one thing we do know for sure is that it's hard to get in touch with people in the city right now. We sympathize with everyone who can't get in touch with a parent, friend, sibling, or anyone else you care about in Boston today. And while we can't do a ton about it, we can try and point you in the direction of help. One of those directions is Google Person Finder. From Boston, you can add names and provide information about people in the city, sending out a message in a bottle that you're alright. Friends and family elsewhere can search the quick and dirty database for information about their loved ones. It's not a perfect means of getting in touch, but it's better than nothing, and hopefully it can put some troubled hearts at ease.

There are a lot of ways people can prepare for death. With things like life insurance and wills you can make sure your loved ones are taken care of, or at least not fighting over your stuff, but what happens to your virtual stuff when you die? Should your Google Docs live on even after you're gone, or should they self destruct and join you in the sweet hereafter? Now with Google's Inactive Account Manager, you can decide what happens to your digital life after your corporeal one is over.

Let's say you're a wealthy, seafaring merchant. You suspect a pirate is sneaking up the hull of your ship to steal your hard-earned doubloons in the hold, so you cry out to the Imperial Navy to arrest the dastardly villain! But when the Imperial pirate-hunter arrives, you panic and call to the Navy to come and arrest him, too -- yeah, the guy who was supposed to arrest the first guy. Well, that's sort of what some movie studios are doing right now. NBC Universal and Lionsgate, among others, are asking Google to take down the takedown requests they themselves had requested, and Google isn't having it.

We've all been clamoring to find a new RSS reader since Google gave their Google Reader service a death sentence. In the first two days since Google's announcement, more than half a million Reader users defected by signing up with Feedly. The service started listening to their new users about what they can do better, and it looks like they took the suggestions to heart, because Feedly just launched new versions of their apps. I had an early look at the updates for Android and Firefox, and they're pretty great.

I'm going to try to make patent law sound exciting here, because this is actually pretty big news. Google just announced that they won't sue developers or anyone else using open source software that uses their patents. There are some limitations, including a very limited number of patents to start with, and that Google reserves the right to sue if they're "first attacked," but it's still great news for tech innovation.

Near the end of last year, the Language Council of Sweden released its list of the newest words added to the Swedish language, one of which is the delightful term "ogooglebar" -- seriously, just try to say it out loud without smiling -- a word that translates as "ungoogleable." Turns out, Google had a problem with that term, and just the idea that they might have to talk to Mountain View's lawyers was enough to get the language council to back away from "ogooglebar," denying it official status as a word in the Swedish language.