Gadgetory

Google's annual IO conference this year was a drastically different affair from last year no high flying stunts and no new device announcements the highlight was a surprise rare appearance by CEO Larry Page who sounded hoarse due to strained vocal cords oh we should be building great things that don't exist page was preceded by a parade of Google executives trotting out the tech giant's latest creations among them at ten dollar a month streaming music service to compete with the likes of Spotify and Pandora so this is radio without rules the song keeps playing but in the background all access has made us a never-ending mix of related tracks now for curious about what's coming up we can swipe to take a little peek ahead but more importantly we can tap on the playlist icon and see in detail everything that's coming up a redesigned Google+ was unveiled with a look and feel reminiscent of Pinterest this new stream is about design and depth and today we're introducing related hashtags what we'll do is we'll analyze the content of a post and Google will put on the appropriate hashtag new photo features to enhance and edit your images were introduced one which Google humbly called Auto awesome creates short animations from a series of photos taken in quick bursts sharing photos may be less of a chore thanks to a tool that selects highlights from a larger batch of images so if you go on vacation to Thailand it'll take out things that are overexposed and under exposed and blurry and it will filter in photos that you want to see so people that you have affinity for your family or your friends google also demonstrated a simpler way to search on desktops using your voice and a new hot wording feature that anticipates your query ok Google show me pictures of the santa cruz boardwalk they're taking on Apple in Syria in a really big way and what they're doing behind the scenes is really connecting together things like voice social mapping across all of the services we're going to see much much more of that it wasn't a flashy conference but the new tools announced may offer more substance getting users the information they want when they want it in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News