This week on the GigaOM Chrome Show, we explain why all of the services Google is introducing will help it rule the world. OK, maybe not the world, but Google is prepping an app store disruption through Chrome. We also share an extension to help you manage the new Google Play Music All Access subscription.

Product designer Carla Diana is a guest on this week’s Internet of Things podcast. She and Stacey Higginbotham chat about how design will play a key role in connected devices in the home and what the recipe for IoT success really is.

As always, we recap the biggest events of the week on the GigaOM Weekly Wrapup show. Chris Albrecht, Tom Krazit, Janko Roettgers, Kevin Tofel and special guest, Peter Kafka, analyze stories around the new Xbox One, Yahoo purchasing Tumblr (Tumbl-hoo!) and how HTC got itself in the mess it’s in. What will it take for HTC to stage an Android rebound?

(Download the GigaOM Chrome Show)

(Download the GigaOM Internet of Things podcast)

(Download the GigaOM Weekly Wrapup podcast)

Take a look back at our live coverage of Google’s flagship conference, which started at 9am PT Wednesday. We’re not expecting as major a news event as we have in past years, but there will be no shortage of updates to the company’s plans for Android, Chrome, YouTube, and its cloud-computing services. We’ll have a full contingent of GigaOM reporters at the show bringing you updates both here and throughout the course of the day, so stay tuned.

So far, Google has announced:

• 900 million Android activations
• Three new Google Maps location APIs
• Synced Google Cloud Messaging accounts, which will let you sync notifications across devices.
• New Google Play Game Services features that can do multiplayer gaming through Google+
• Android Studio, a new development environment for Android app developers.
• A new design for the Google Play app store that highlights tablet apps.
• Google Play Music All Access, a subscription music service.
• A new educational initiative involving Android tablets and apps for education.
• Sweeping updates to Google+, including a new stream design.
• Conversational search within Chrome.
• Big changes to Google Maps.

Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of MIT Technology Review, has tried both and hated “every single moment of native apps.” His publication lost money, had to let go of resources and got nothing in return, he said, and decided to close down the native apps in October of last year.

“Traditional publishers figured the internet taught readers they could pay nothing. Native apps would expected to be like digital replicas but be better and would create monetization,” said Pontin, but that hasn’t happened for all publishers. “We’re moving to HTML5,” he noted, even though Pontin cautioned that the LocalStorage feature of HTML5 is the only agreed-upon function of the specification.

Some content types work better on native apps, however, or are supplemented only with HTML. Ryan Spoon, SVP, Product Development at ESPN, says that the back of every ESPN business card reads: ”Serve fans anytime anywhere.” That means going to where the users are and having content both in native apps and on the web.

“It depends on content: what you want to build, how you want to monetize it. The web experience is being built truly mobile first; that’s a shift. We think mobile and apply global. For rich experiences, however, I think it has to be native.” Spoon said. He also pointed out that apps are more powerful for re-engagement thanks to in-app notifications.

Nick Alt, VP of Mobile at Vimeo agreed: “Push notification and in app messaging shows far higher engagement than email marketing for our service.” With content, that’s really what it’s all about: engagement. If you can boost engagement and then monetize it, you’ve got a potent business model.

For Vimeo the goal is to “build a better user experience and obtain a more engaged customer, particularly on mobile devices.” Alt said that tablet adoption is moving at an aggressive clip, faster than smartphone usage of Vimeo ever was. Spoon agreed on the engagement point, saying “Our goal is to lift engagement: both usage and users. The rest will follow. And the best usage depends on the product. Native, for example can help with ads and transactions.”

All three speakers agree that ultimately, content providers have to choose the best vehicle for their content and that either — or a combination of both — is a smart strategy, at least until HTML5 standards are agreed upon by all. Pontin summed it up like this: “A good compromise is an HTML5 app wrapped in native code for now. It helps you keep a common code base and in the end, open standards usually win.”

Check out the rest of our paidContent Live 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

A transcription of the video follows on the next page

Go to page 2 (of 2) on paidContent .

“There’s lots of content in the newspaper,” Berlow noted. “After viewing the most-emailed stories for a few weeks, I asked myself, where did all the news go?” Think back to the Presidential debates, Berlow said. If you focused solely on topics provided by news algorithms, you’d be reading nothing but stories about Big Bird and binders full of women.

Amplifying crowd behavior is a start when it comes to managing societal data but we need to flip the approach, Berlow said. ”How do we harness and amplify our collective creativity to solve the world’s problems?”

To do this, we need to find crowd-sourcing solutions that aren’t just the sum of parts, but are greater than the sum of parts. Photocity is a good example, according to Berlow. It takes user submitted 2D camera images and creates 3D images from them; a product that didn’t exist until the crowd’s data was assimilated.

This leads to one of the biggest challenges of our time with data: The personal data problem, where you are both the customer and the product. How can we spark a new personal data economy?

Through the WeTheData.org project, Berlow offers a suggestion, finding how all of our personal data is interconnected. By gathering human input first on approximately 90 personal data challenges and mapping this complexity, the project determined that the top problems emerging are digital access, digital trust, data literacy, platform openness.

This may sound obvious in retrospect, Berlow said, but “so too was gravity after we discovered it.” And now that the personal data economy problem is better defined, algorithms can be applied to focus on the biggest issues, not every single one.

Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

A transcription of the video follows on the next page

Go to page 2 (of 2) on paidContent .

This turns the Kindle Fire into a potentially lucrative product for Amazon, even though most believe it sells the Kindle Fire products near cost, if not below it. Even better: The combination of decreasing hardware prices over time and a rise in content sales — think apps, movies, books, music — will help the product line even more, according to Markkanen:

“Considering the probable margins of app and content sales, our research shows that Kindle Fire is a credible proposition. We expect that there will be a certain level of ‘innovation plateauing’ in mobile hardware taking place over the next five years, and that would certainly work in Amazon’s favor. Its future devices are likely to require less cross-subsidy than the ones we’ve seen so far.”

Markkanen may not have the exact figure for content profits required, but you can bet Amazon does. And this may be why the company wanted to retain control over mobile app pricing when it launched its alternative Appstore. By understanding consumer preferences perhaps better than any other online retailer, Amazon knows the right pricing “mix” for content sales to make money off hardware sales.

Engadget noticed the product launch and my finger is already hovering over the “order” button. The BookBook, for those not familiar with it, is a case that makes your iPad look like a vintage book. It comes in three colors for $69.99, which includes U.S. shipping: Vibrant Red, Classic Black and Vintage Brown. The BookBook opens and closes with two zippers so you can still charge your iPad mini while in the case. The BookBook isn’t just a looker though.

Your iPad mini is secured inside the case in what BookBook calls a support frame: Essentially, it’s a leather pocket or sleeve holding the tablet. Two hardback book covers wrapped in leather make up the front and back while between the support frame and the covers are lined with black suede for protection.

You can even prop up the iPad mini for watching video or typing with the BookBook, so there’s no functionality loss compared to most other cases. The BookBook weighs 7.5 ounces, which isn’t too bad considering the light iPad mini itself weighs 10.8 ounces. I worked full-time in a library for six years so maybe that’s why the BookBook is calling my name?

Nokia says that 150 playlists “that are curated and kept up to date by an expert team of US based musicologists” are available, comprised of a wide variety of music genres, from classical to house dance music. Additionally, playlists created by Lana Del Rey, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, as well as other well-known performers, are available. But Nokia Music isn’t just made up of the service-provided playlists. Personalized playlists can be built using the “create” function, which access millions of songs in Nokia’s music library.

The free service should appeal to music lovers that own a Lumia device in the US. Nokia Music doesn’t contain any advertising, so music will be uninterrupted. And the playlists can be accessed offline, so tunes can be enjoyed without using up precious mobile broadband. A “gig finder” feature also offers information on local music events and the app ties in to Nokia’s digital music store where users can purchase MP3 songs or albums.

Nokia Music is likely the first of many new announcements coming from the company. Tomorrow, Nokia has a scheduled press event in New York City, where it is widely expected to debut handsets designed to run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8.

At a high level, none of this is surprising. Dive deeper into the sea of change, however, and you’ll be hard pressed to track all of the lower level currents enabling this movement. That’s why we have Launchpad, our mobile startup competition at GigaOM’s Mobilize event: We wade through everything going on in the mobile sector and seek out the next generation of companies, products and services that will shape the mobile world of tomorrow.

We’re proud to announce the 10 companies that made the cut for Launchpad. So here they are, in alphabetical order. Join us at Mobilize 2012 on Sept. 20-21 to see who wins!

• Dashlane – Dashlane believes that mobile purchases need to be frictionless and work without a keyboard. The company’s mobile app goes beyond merely saving passwords and payment information and allows users to automate tasks such as registering, logging in and checking out of websites with minimal use of a keyboard but a high level of security.
• Eyeona – Eyeona’s mobile app is all about price transparency between the retailer and consumer. When a user adds a photo of a receipt to Eyeona, the app tracks that product to see if it goes on sale. If the price drops within the retailer’s price protection policy window, the app alerts the user, and the user can contact the retailer to get the lower price.
• InfiniteCanvasApp.com – Originally created to tell non-linear stories in comics, Infinite Canvas abandons the traditional left-right page-turn navigation of ebooks, digital magazines and other media, expanding the usable space to tell non-linear stories that go up, down, back, forward, and hyperlink to other parts in the document.
• InTooch – On the surface, InTooch’s mobile app helps people easily exchange contact information. But it goes further than that. The app’s auto-prompt technology means that the app is open and ready for the information when you are, and once connected, you and your new contact can discover mutual friends and interests and instantly connect on social networks.
• myERP.com – myERP’s recently launched mobile app, Intelligent Business Assistant, is like Siri for the company’s all-in-one business suite. The app uses speech recognition, natural language processing and predictive technology to turn spoken commands and questions into real-time results.
• OneTok – Post-Siri, voice is becoming the new user interface. But building voice control system is complicated. OneTok’s SaaS platform allows developers to easily add natural-language-based voice controls to their mobile app.
• Phroni – Ousia’s Phroni uses a machine-learning algorithm to scan text that you read on your mobile device, find the keywords, and create links for users to instantly search for those keywords on Google, Wikipedia, Twitter and other sites.
• Restlet – Restlet, a web API platform, is launching APISpark at Mobilize. APISpark is a PaaS tool that allows users to create, host and manage custom web APIs through a web browser.
• Snappli – Snappli helps you maximize your limited data plan (and speed up your mobile connection) by compressing mobile data in real-time by up to 85 percent, and even helps extend battery life.
• Thirst – Thirst digs through your tweets and, using its own natural language processing technology, surfacing the most important tweets and topics that have come up since the last time you signed in.

I’ve seen Facebook sharing of digital content from an e-reader in the past, but as an Evernote user, this feature intrigues me:

“For the first time, Reader is combining features from Evernote to allow users to save their favorite web content to enjoy any time. Evernote’s Web Clipper allows saving content with a click, and pages saved with Evernote Clearly are optimized for Reader’s crisp E-Ink display. Favorite passages can also be annotated on Reader and saved back to Evernote for viewing later on any smartphone, tablet or PC.”

Adding Evernote support is a smart move by Sony and I anticipate others — namely, Amazon and Barnes & Noble — to follow with expanded sharing or web clipping options. Moving content to the cloud for later consumption on nearly any device is just one of the benefits brought by Evernote and it makes sense: Why read a long web page on a device that’s not optimized for the activity when you can clip it and read later on a better display? Likewise, the reverse option is appealing: I often use Evernote Clearly to clip the text of web pages and could use the new Sony Reader to view them later.

With the PRS-T2, Sony is also throwing in a free voucher for an e-book copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone through a partnership with Pottermore, making the Potter pot, that much sweeter for its new Reader.