Remember those quick start templates Google added to Wave back in April? Well, time has come for some official Google Wave tutorials covering 3 basic tasks like planning an event, drafting documents and brainstorming. So the next time you visit Wave pay some attention to that link, under the quick start templates, titled “Tutorials: train me in the Wave way …” that brings you to this question: “What do you want to master?“. This will create a new wave pre-loaded with some content for you along with some instructions in order to get a quick grasp of using Google Wave.

By the way, Google Wave is now available for everyone as part of Google Labs. Just visit wave.google.com to try these tutorials for yourself.

The web browser is undeniably the most important piece of software on your computer. These days much of what you do with your computer happens in your browser. Today, Google Chrome leaves beta on Mac and Linux. Just in time! I recently made Google Chrome (beta by then) my default browser. So, that made me feel better about my decision.

How about you? Which browser do you prefer/use?

You can now download Chrome from google.com/chrome.

[ illustration by Christoph Niemann ]

I mean, having an Android overdose was expected today, but this?! Oh, I bet this day made some Apple fanboys jealous. So, the second day at the Google I/O 2010 was about 2 things; Android and Google TV. This time, live-blogging and live-waving was not enough so Matt Cutts started live-buzzing here along with the event.

Android

Yes, Froyo is out. (Android Gingerbread release currently planned for Q4, 2010). Froyo release includes major updates to these areas:

• Speed
• APIs and Services
• Browser
• Android Market

Three of the most striking changes there include over-the-air application installation, remote music streaming and the ability to turn your Android phone into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

Except for that, Android 2.2 aims towards improved overall performance that includes (and is not limited to):

• Performance of the browser that has been enhanced using the V8 engine, which enables faster loading of JavaScript-heavy pages.
• Dalvik VM performance boost: 2x-5x performance speedup for CPU-heavy code over Android 2.1 with Dalvik JIT.

Google TV

Google TV is the second big thing revealed on the second day at the Google I/O this year.

Google TV is a new experience made for television that combines the TV you know and love with the freedom and power of the Internet.

If you ask me, the closest thing to Google TV is Boxee box. Have you tried Boxee?

As expected, Google I/O keynote was thrilling. Google made some major announcements regarding the future of the web. The event began at 9 a.m. PDT, that is around 7 p.m. here in Greece. The keynote started with VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra taking the stage followed by VP of Product Management Sundar Pichai. It was all about HTML5 and open standards.

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.

Do you recall the Native Client technology revealed last fall by Google? Well, today Google released a developer preview of the Native Client SDK.

Native Client is an open-source technology for running native code in web applications, with the goal of maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability, and safety that people expect from web apps.

With the Native Client SDK -which is available under Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux- you can build web apps that seamlessly use native C/C++ code to perform high-performance computation, render 2D/3D graphics, play audio, and respond to mouse and keyboard events. If you are interested in building Native Client apps, visit code.google.com/p/nativeclient-sdk.

Check out the Getting Started guide for more instructions for building and running the examples.

365 days ago Google reached out its venture capital arm, Google Ventures. A year later Google unveils more information about Google Ventures.

You can now find out more about the people that make up the growing Google Ventures team as well as information on the 10 currently announced portfolio companies.

The 10 portfolio companies announced there include:

• Adimab
• Corduro
• English Central
• OpenCandy
• Pixazza
• Recorded Future
• SCVNGR
• Silver Spring Networks
• VigLink
• V-Vehicle

All the companies mentioned above are quite interesting. However, there is one that in my opinion really stands out, Recorded Future.

Recorded Future is a new type of search engine which allows you to explore temporal information about people, companies, locations and events that take place in relation to these entities. Interested in what led up to the General Motors bankruptcy or what will happen to Apple next month? Or perhaps you want to know where Hu Jintao traveled recently, and where he plans to travel in the future.

So, what do you want to know about the future?

Google acquired BumbTop, a desktop environment known for its 3D capabilities. According to their announcement BumpTop will no longer be available for sale and they have no plans for product updates any longer.

For the next week, we’re keeping BumpTop Free available for download at bumptop.com/download to give BumpTop fans one last chance to grab a copy.

That said, I wonder how Google will use this technology. What will it be? The rumored Google TV, the anticipated Google Tablet or something else?

Just visit secbrowsing.appspot.com to run a browser plugin check. Afterwards SecBrowsing will automatically provide you with quick links/fixes for your browser plugins that are vulnerable. If you are using Google Chrome, there is an extension that periodically checks if your browser is running any out-of-date, vulnerable plugins (e.g., Java, Flash) and notifies you if you do.

SecBrowsing’s source code is available on Google Code. Also check out SecBrowsing’s blog for regular news on browser-related security issues.

You can follow SecBrowsing on Twitter here.

On the contrary, the iPhone App Store is still far ahead, having 180.000 apps and counting. But it wouldn’t surprise me if we see a statistically significant decrease of the gap between iPhone apps and Android apps by the end of this year.

What do you think?

Google believes that developers should have their choice of tools and technologies to create applications.

Andy Rubin, Google VP of Engineering, Android

In a blog post today, Andy Rubin announced that Google is partnering with Adobe to bring the full web, great applications, and developer choice to the Android platform.