

Google I/O 2014 - dotnick
https://www.google.com/events/io

======
Goosey
After making it all the way to the exoplanets and back to the higgs I nearly
gave up before finally realizing I could scroll down.

I hate this trend in web design.

~~~
amaks
If you were attentive, you could notice "continue to site" arrow on the very
first screen.

~~~
awj
If your UI requires that users "be attentive" just to discover the content
_you 're trying to convey_, then your UI is awful and the user's failure to
see it is entirely your fault.

~~~
ryannevius
Well said. I blame it partially on designer groupthink.

Of course design elements (color, typeface, white space, etc) are
important...but visitors of your site are interested in consuming content NOW
(not a few seconds form now). People are lazy.

~~~
aasarava
Actually, I'm inclined to bet this was one designer's concept and not the work
of many people reviewing prototypes and giving feedback.

Design-by-group tends to produce boring, cluttered, seen-it-before layouts
with little innovation. This seems to be on the completely opposite end of the
spectrum -- with no one saying, "Uh, wait -- I think you need to make it clear
that you can scroll for more info."

(And also: "Uh, I'm not sure developers are going to take kindly to Google
requesting access to their microphones so soon after the NSA revelations.")

~~~
judk
That's not actually what "groupthink" means, so you aren't really disagreeing.

------
habosa
Last summer I interned on Google+ Developer Relations so I got to go to IO for
free and as staff, which is pretty rare even among Googlers.

IO is an incredible place to learn about the latest in technical best
practices, especially if you're into Android or web dev. However there is so
much to learn in so little time that it's impossible to see every tech talk
that you want to. The real reason to shell out $900 + travel would be to go
talk to Google DevRel and other people in your field to build your network.

If you're just going for the technical info, you're honestly much better off
saving $900 and watching the YouTube videos the next day. They're incredibly
well organized and you can pause to think as you watch. I ended up watching
all of the ones I went to live for a second time when I got home.

------
fidotron
The big problems with attendees last year were that the demographic imbalances
were in many ways embarrassing, and that they didn't feel it was developer
focussed enough. It'll be interesting to see if there is a giveaway at all
this year, since a large part of previous woes could be down to people
attending just for that, and I'd cynically observe that for many attendees the
long term value was actually just the giveaway.

The lottery is a definite step in the right direction, but the branding is
just all kinds of terrible, and makes me wonder how much they've really
learned.

If they can improve access to the same content and people at remote locations
that might be a game changer (i.e. hangouts to allow remote participation in
some of their sideshows), as most of the value of attending the main event is
what goes on outside the main talks, thanks to YouTube being so effective for
hosting those.

~~~
dotnick
I honestly fail to see how the lottery improves things.

IMHO the best way is to just announce that there's no giveaway this year. Not
the best promotion for the event though.

~~~
fidotron
I believe the thinking is that the previous setup meant that most people there
were the kind that would obsessively refresh windows in order to secure
places. The lottery means there's no benefit to those possibly excessively
enthused about the idea, and so the tone of the whole thing could be more
balanced and professional.

They're going to have to be careful about hotel bookings though, since the
announcement of winners will cause a surge.

~~~
objclxt
> _They 're going to have to be careful about hotel bookings though, since the
> announcement of winners will cause a surge._

Is this no different to selling out in minutes though? Besides, hotels already
know a) the dates of Google IO, and b) how many people are attending, so you'd
imagine they'd already have priced that into their rates. Unless you're
talking about the actual booking systems going offline, but that seems
unlikely as lots of people will use aggregators (Expedia, Kayak, etc) at
scale.

------
guelo
In order to be allowed to buy a ticket they should have a simple dynamically-
generated programming challenge so non-programmers can't search for the exact
answer. Maybe some kind of dynamically generated boolean math problem to be
implemented with if-else statements.

~~~
dsl
You should have to write a working Juniper configuration to establish a
peering session at an exchange with YouTube.

Then non-network engineers wouldn't be grabbing up all the tickets.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Tech world's equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru.

------
pjmlp
Even without attending it, I am looking forward to see if there are
presentations about ART and improving the state of Java on Android.

Now with Java 8 out, it is pretty lame that one still needs to use a Java 6
fork to target the majority of Android devices.

~~~
yincrash
SDK Tools, Revision 22.6 (March 2014) added support for Java 7 language
features. You use Java 7 to build.

"features like multi-catch, try-with-resources, and the diamond operator. " \-
[1]

[1] - [http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/tools-
notes.html](http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/tools-notes.html)

~~~
pjmlp
Only works with Android 4.4!

------
benjamincburns
Odd...

"This page has been blocked from accessing your microphone."

I don't have headphones on, and I see no other indication as to why they'd
want to access my mic. Weird.

~~~
prawks
At the bottom right-hand corner of the page when it loads it tells me:

"Explore technology and its impact from small to large through tapping,
spinning and making sound.

It seems that making noise causes the animation to do things.

------
blisterpeanuts
Any big announcements rumored for this year's I/O, e.g. Android 5.0, Nexus 6
phone, 12" tablet, more offline services (Maps, Docs, etc.)?

I tried a couple of times to get in, failed, and resigned myself to watching
the presentations and tutorials online for free. That's fine. Say what you
will, Google gives away a lot of knowledge for free and I have benefited
greatly.

Can't wait till June.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
There won't be a Nexus phone, those are announced at the end of the year
usually. No one is expecting 5.0, though they usually do release a partial
update every six months (maybe another KitKat, like the three JellyBean
releases).

------
nawitus
Hmm, that website is extremely slow for me (on Firefox).

~~~
aeflash
Straight up crashes it for me.

~~~
appleflaxen
Yeah; me too.

~~~
slater
WFM on FFox 29, albeit slow.

------
room271
This page crashes my browser (FF 28 in Ubuntu). Ooops.

Anyone else experiencing this?

~~~
appleflaxen
Yes; same thing. Weird.

------
bsimpson
Typically, they give presale access to repeat attendees ("Ions") before the
general public gets access. As an Ion, there's incentive to go every year if
only to maintain your ability to go next year (nevermind interacting with the
Googlers who build the APIs you rely or the hardware seeding, clearly also
benefits).

Wonder if they've scrapped that this year too.

~~~
eitally
That was only for people who have attended _every_ I/O.

------
mfkp
Personally, I'm glad they switched to the lottery. I had the worst experience
last year. Got a ticket after refreshing the page for a half hour, but then
Google Wallet was broken so it wouldn't let me pay for it (cart expires in 5
minutes). Hopefully they can handle the server load spread out over 2 days
this time.

~~~
suyash
I still don't think Lottery is the best possible solution but yes it it one
step better than last year.

------
tgeery
The console logging going on is pretty dang funny...

~~~
stevenspasbo
The morse code (-... . . .--. / -... --- --- .--. / -... . . .--. / -... ---
--- .--.) translates to "BEEP BOOP BEEP BOOP".

------
brianwillis
I'm fascinated by the dotted countdown clock at the bottom of the page. It
took me a while to figure out exactly what it was, and I got lost in Wikipedia
reading about how braille is represented in unicode, thinking it had something
to do with that.

My guess is that the first set in dark blue is days remaining, followed by
hours in purple, minutes in green, and seconds in light blue. Haven't quite
wrapped my head around which dot represents what value, but it sure does look
cool.

~~~
anvarik
days do not have an upper bound; therefore you see 8bits on the most left
position. Hours can be at most 24, so 7th bit is not present, minutes&seconds
can be at most 60 so 8th bit is not present etc...

------
pbnjay
Interesting they're doing a lottery for registration. I'm sure it'll reduce
server load though.

Also, I love the binary countdown at the bottom of the page.

------
jack_hanford
Did anyone else notice the Doge messages in the console?

~~~
alxndr
Some pretty silly lines in there:

Object {

boson1: "Reticulating Splines..."

boson2: "There's more Ajax in this loader than an epic greek poem"

boson3: "♬ Reunited and it feels so good"

boson4: "Are you there, Boson? It's me, Margaret."

boson5: "♬ Is he a dot, or is he a speck? When he's underwater does he get
wet?"

exo1: ""Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it
everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human
being who ever was, lived out their lives." \- Carl Sagan"

exo2: "Call me V'Ger"

exo3: "As far as we know, the universe is not Tail Call optimized."

exo-argon: "Investigating: Class J Planet Argon"

exo-bleu: "Detecting: Class H Planet Bleu"

exo-cheddarwurst: "Discovered: Class D Planet Cheddarwurst"

exo-daytripper: "Located: Class M Planet Day Tripper"

exo-dunebuggy: "Detecting: Class D Planet Dune Buggy"

exo-emanthaler: "Located: Class D Planet Emmentaler"

exo-hoth: "Investigating: Class K Planet Hoth"

exo-izod: "Detecting: Class D Planet Golf"

exo-lacoste: "Discovered: Class D Planet Lines"

exo-meangreenie: "Investigating: Class J Planet Mean Greenie"

exo-measels: "Located: Class L Planet Measels"

exo-mumps: "Investigating: Class L Planet Mumps"

exo-neon: "Detecting: Class J Planet Neon"

exo-polo: "Discovered: Class D Planet Colors"

exo-purplehaze: "Discovered: Class D Planet Purple Haze"

exo-tatooine: "Located: Class M Planet Tatooine"

exo-xenon: "Investigating: Class J Planet Xenon"

exo-ziggystardust: "Located: Class L Planet Ziggy Stardust"

neural-banana: "Orange you glad I didn't say banana (╯°□°）╯"

neural-boom: "♬ All we hear is, radio ga ga"

neural-can: "It's got what plants crave:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbxq0IDqD04"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbxq0IDqD04")

neural-cat: "Cat Proximity: [https://xkcd.com/262/"](https://xkcd.com/262/")

neural-doge: "WONTFIX: Duplicate Doge joke"

neural-mona: "It's cool and all, but I'm more into his older stuff:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo_da_Vi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_\(Leonardo_da_Vinci\)")

neural-nes: "What's the fastest TAS you can complete for the I/O 2014
website?"

neural-pong: "Can _you_ do this?
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8IVASo0umU"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8IVASo0umU")

neural-rhex: "Awwww, he's a cute little guy:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISznqY3kESI"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISznqY3kESI")

neural-ufo: "Teach the controversy!"

neuralfail0: "Hint: The eyeball follows the correct diamonds"

neuralfail1: "ಠ_ಠ You _could_ scrape the code for patterns, but you should
probably get back to work."

neuralfail2: "Hi HackerNews, I dare you not to complain about something
involving Big O Notation."

planet1: "I think I can see my house from here."

planet2: "Our apologies to any visitors who suffer from Globophobia."

planet3: "TCP/IP is cool and all, but did I think "IP over Avian Carriers"
would be way more fun:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers")

planet4: "-... . . .--. / -... --- --- .--. / -... . . .--. / -... --- ---
.--."

silicon1: "Little known fact: Silicon looks _exactly_ like a beachball under a
microscope"

silicon2: " wow↵ such structure↵ so crystalline↵ many atom↵ how connect"

silicon3: "FIXME: Remember to write a joke about silicon"

silicon4: "It's only a model."

}

~~~
thomasahle
The morse code is just 'beep boop beep boop'.

------
mnadkvlb
I was completely repelled to register on the first line itself in info about
registration :
[https://www.google.com/events/io/help#!/registration](https://www.google.com/events/io/help#!/registration)

"You will need to sign into Google+ to begin the registration application."
#pushItUpTheirThroatsTillPeopleStartGagging

------
lnanek2
Make sure to enter the "lottery" with a company or app publishing account
email if possible. Just polling people in the industry last time, people with
emails from popular press and media often had no trouble at all. A possible
reason is a whitelist for certain email domains.

------
jdmitch
The thing I first paid attention to was that there is no longer a mad dash to
sign up in the first 10 seconds, but they pick people at random from those who
apply in the first 2 days. I might actually make it for once!

------
rdl
I predict we will now see greater adoption on google wallet, since having a
bunch of google wallets with virtual credit card numbers effectively gives you
more tickets to the lottery. Sneaky plot by google there.

------
whizzkid
You could see that you can scroll down to page from the beginning but i
somehow expected the animation to take me to those information below step by
step. But instead animation started from the beginning again.

------
cbellet
The minigames remind me a lot about Year Walk's finale :)
[http://youtu.be/tD6ZROIlZhU?t=16m11s](http://youtu.be/tD6ZROIlZhU?t=16m11s)

------
benburleson
In the countdown clock at the bottom, I hate when two decimal digits are
displayed with two separate binary digits.

39(base 10) does not equal 011,1001

39 == 0100111

~~~
starfush
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-
coded_decimal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-coded_decimal)

------
flixic
I'm guessing Apple will do the same lottery for WWDC this year, that's what
they did for Tech Talks a few months ago.

~~~
k-mcgrady
As far as I can remember the tech talks have always been a lottery.

------
ithinkso
How you are you guys, not from US, make it to these kind of events? Isn't
obtaining visas and so on a problem?

~~~
rkuykendall-com
Why would you need a visa to attend a conference? You don't need a visa to
travel, and I think people travel for business all the time.

~~~
mwfunk
That's actually not true, it depends on what country you're from. By default,
you need a visa to enter the US, even for short visits. However, if you're
from one of the countries on this page, then the visa requirement is waived
for visits < 90 days:

[http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/visit/visa-
wai...](http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/visit/visa-waiver-
program.html)

~~~
rplnt
If you meet some additional criteria (mentioned on the page as well). Also
many of the countries were added just recently (2008).

------
Xlythe
Lottery goes from April 8 - April 10th.

------
lukasm
Why do they need microphone access?

~~~
WalterSear
For the little interactive animation at the top of the page. Makes some things
bounce around - the spinning satellite is one.

------
kalasoo
Those animations and swags on the website are totally useless and anti-
informatic!

------
devcodepi
anyone know how much $$ required to attend if chosen by lottery system ?

~~~
zastrowm
The usual pricing: $900, $300 for students.

When you sign up you have to have a Google Wallet account so that your ticket
is automatically purchased if you're chosen.

~~~
devcodepi
Thank you.

------
kasperset
I hope they will finally announce Chrome with built in Dart vm.

------
TrainedMonkey
Binary clock countdown to registration is pretty cool.

------
diorray
Let's hope that they release Glass in June 25.

~~~
jf5s2
I can't wait for Google's fleet of personal spy drones to violate my privacy
even further.

~~~
shiftpgdn
You have no expectation of privacy while in public.

~~~
jf5s2
Actually I do expect a certain degree of privacy while in public. No everyone
is comfortable with Google spying and data mining everything they can get
their hands on.

------
puppetmaster3
I wonder if anyone will talk about Android issues covered here:
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7456540](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7456540)

------
EGreg
I am super impressed and amazed.

DOES ANYONE HERE KNOW HOW THEY MANAGED TO GET THE MOBILE PAGE TO APPEAR
WITHOUT A TOOLBAR IN MOBILE SAFARI??? Wow. I have never seen this. I want to
be able to do it also.

The screen starts off with the browser controls already minimized, even when
the page hasn't scrolled yet.

Also when you scroll down, the bottom toolbar never appears, and it doesn't
have the typical problem of showing the toolbar when you tap on the bottom
part of the screen. How do they pull this off?

EDIT: I looked at the page. Is it this? <meta content="minimal-ui"
name="viewport">

~~~
interpol_p
The minimal-ui thing was just added in iOS 7.1

------
hydralist
i dont feel smart enough for this website

------
puppetmaster3
How about covering this google: shame on developers for using the api that end
users use:
[https://twitter.com/duhroach/status/421678850049728512](https://twitter.com/duhroach/status/421678850049728512)
We don't have choice, as you don't nuge updates.

Andorid is thew new IE!

------
alco
OK, I've scrolled all the way down, seen some nice colors and heard some nice
music. But where's the info about Google I/O?

Seriously, I didn't even try to read the text on the page because its overall
mood implies the text is not important at all.

This site simply looks like someone's homework rather than an info site for a
conference.

