First and foremost, the VP8 codec. Last summer Google acquired On2 for its video compression technology. Today, Google announced VP8 codec as part of a new project named WebM. By the way, VP8 is now open-source.

The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone.

One of the most important things about this is that the WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors! Read more here.

…including Microsoft!

In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

What’s Great About WebM

• Very high quality video
• Great video playback performance, even on older computers
• 100% free and open to everyone
• Supported on popular video sites like YouTube

Later on, Adobe shared some HTML5 love on the stage.

The keynote continued with the Chrome Web Store. The Chrome Web Store opens later this year.

Users will be able to discover a broad range of amazing web apps while developers will be able to reach millions of new users.

Next was Wave. Google Wave has been opened up to everyone as of today (also part of Google Apps as of today).

The keynote ended with an extensive reference to App Engine, GWT and some great things coming from Google + VMWare.

VMWare has been working with Google to bring an open-source layer for the cloud

You can watch the Google I/O 2010 Keynote online here.

I am guessing Day 2 will be all about Android. Woo hoo!

P.S. By the time I am writing this Google Buzz APIs come into play. Take a look here.

It uses Google Accounts

There is so little chance that you don’t have a Google Account these days. What about a Google Profile? With Google Buzz your Google Profile is now getting in action. Featuring followers/following, public Buzz timeline with likes, comments, maps and more. Have you been using OpenID lately? Which account provider do you use the most? I bet Google is your first choice (if applicable).

It’s not a first mover

As Robert (Scoble) has mentioned before “The problem is that first mover rarely wins“. The thing is, Google is not a first mover in this. Google Buzz takes advantage of some of the most intriguing and successful existing features in other web services like FriendFeed and Twitter. It has incuded the Followers/Following feature which has proved its popularity in the latest years (see Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.). It also uses Google Reader’s and FriendFeed’s Like feature. The appearance of Google Buzz is very FriendFeed-like. I am not sure if Google Buzz can succeed where FriendFeed couldn’t, but I bet this time Google’s social fight/attempt will turn out successful.

It is made of PubSubHubbub

It’s real-time. Enough said.

There are also a few other stuff that make Google Buzz stand out. For instance, have you tried editing you comment or removing your “like”? See what happens to that buzz mail in your inbox?

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works.

Although I still cannot see Buzz inside my Gmail or via my Phone I have to say that I am a little bit excited. Google Buzz APIs are already available here.

And here is a short video explaining what is Google Buzz.

What do you think?

• Steve Jobs showed up saying they want to kick off 2010 by introducing a truly magical and revolutionary new product.
• There was a little talk about the success of the iPod and the iPhone over the last years with some historical and data reference. Plus, saying that Apple is a mobile devices company, that’s what we do.
• After wondering if there is room for a third category device in the middle of a laptop and/or a smartphone, Steve just said iPad.
• From that time and on it was all about applauding and embracing this new magical thing called the iPad.

We’ve always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts — we want to make the best tech, but have them be intuitive. It’s the combination of these two things that have let us make the iPad.

iPad’s main features inlcude:

• 9.7-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
• 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip
• Wi-Fi + 3G model
• 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
• Built-in speakers
• Microphone

You may find out more about the iPad here. However, as you may have noticed, there a few missing features.

If you ask me, I was getting ready to catch up with the event along with gdgt’s and engadget’s live coverage. I was ready to listen to whatever Steve was ready to say. I mean, we were all ready for the best tablet pc ever, right? Well, the first impression of the iPad was like “hmmm.. it’s not bad”. Not that I don’t think this is an exceptional mobile device. Maybe I was overwhelmed by all the buzz going on about the Apple Tablet. I was waiting for something truly innovative and outstanding.

The User Interface was awesome, as usual in all Apple products. Could be better though. The whole idea of downloading the same apps you download for your iPhone was a bit surprising and also a good way to endorse the power of the iPhone App Store. Everything else seemed to be quite elegant.

Anyhow, Apple’s iPad has definitely killed the netbook market and we are about to witness, as I have said before, a change in personal computing in the years to come shifting the Personal Computer (P.C.) towards the mobile devices.

Don’t forget to check out this real-time look at twitter mentions of terms related to Apple’s product launch earlier today.