Google News Announcments and Developments

A while back we started hearing rumors about some kind of secret project Google was working on involving eyeglasses -- smart eyeglasses.

You'd wear them like a normal pair of specs, but they'd somehow be connected to the Web, possibly through the Android phone in your pocket. And the lenses would display all kinds of information -- text and images relating to whatever it is you're looking at.

So if you were standing on a sidewalk downtown, for instance, your vision would be overlayed with info about shops, restaurants, transportation, directions to where you're going, any kind of info you'd otherwise have to find out by messing around with your phone.

There have been lots of rumors in the past few months that Google plans to release a tablet under its own name. An official announcement about the device was expected to be made in May but now The Verge reports, via unnamed sources, that those plans have now changed and we won't be hearing anything official about  the Google tablet until sometime in July.

The story claims that the decision to delay the tablet's launch was due in part to make some design changes for the product and also to hopefully lower the price of the device. While the tablet was said to be targeting a $249 or a $19 price point, a more recent rumor claims that it could go down as low as $149.

YouTube has announced a content deal with Paramount which will provide access to nearly 500 new flicks. Google Play, formerly known as the Android Market, will also enjoy the additional content thanks to the new agreement. While what movies will be made available remains unknown, that number of movies could include more than half of Paramount's films since the 1950s.

The new content will be slowly added over the next few weeks to YouTube and Google Play's movie libraries. The blog post only mentions availability to U.S. and Canadian users, so access to the videos may be limited exclusively to North America.

It's a moment we've all feared: we need to get somewhere, but we need directions. We fire up the computer and the internet is down. You can't make it to Google Maps, so what do you do? Maybe you try your tablet. It's down too. In desperation, you pull your smartphone out - your carrier also happens to be down at the moment. There's a chance you have a GPS system in your car, but as luck would have it, that also happens to be down. Thankfully, Google knows what to do.

Say hello to Google Maps for NES. It's the service you know and love, but for your NES. The Nintendo Entertainment System might have released in 1985 but don't let that tell you you're out of luck. Far from it, actually.