Google Pay in the Scandinavian states of Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden is now officially available, opening up the service to millions within the Nordic nations who previously only had access to Apple Pay for mobile payments, having launched within the region earlier this summer.
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Following the first availability of the Nexus Player in the UK last month, the Nexus Player is now available in 9 new international countries. Among them are Australia, as well as eight different European countries:
The device launched in October of 2014 to little fanfare, and we reviewed it not long after saying that it’s a bit unfinished. Right now, owners of the Nexus Player are the only lucky souls to have their hands on Android 5.1.1.
Data released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reveals that there are now as many mobile Internet connections as there are people in the USA. While not everyone has a mobile data SIM or dongle, those with multiple devices make up for those left out, taking the average to a fraction over 100 percent.
Six other countries also manage to have more mobile data subscriptions than people, Finland topping the list with an average of 1.25 connections per person. The overall average across the 34 countries within the OECD grouping was 72.4 percent.
Via The Register
Rovio has a lot in the works. The Finnish-game maker last week released Angry Birds Epic, an RPG-style game and a first for the series, and later this year Rovio will release Angry Birds Stella led by the lady bird in the saga.
On top of all that, Rovio is announcing something they’ve been working on with Hasbro: Angry Birds Transformers. The latest title in the series will be like Angry Birds Star Wars, another Hasbro partnership for Rovio, combining the iconic gameplay with characters that resemble those from the movies.
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We already mentioned that Google’s Chromecast is landing in 11 new countries across North America and Europe, and Google’s transcontinental roll out doesn’t stop there.
As noted by Android Police, both Google’sNexus 5 and Nexus 7 phone and tablet can now be bought on the Google Play Store in several European markets: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden.
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Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, #GooglePlayMusic is here http://t.co/u6zajHQKrM
— Google Play (@GooglePlay) October 1, 2013
Google has been adding support for various Google Play services in a lot of new countries recently and today it continues that trend with the roll out of Google Play Music in seven new locations. The company made the announcement in a tweet on its official Google Play Twitter account today and confirmed that the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland now all have access to purchase music through Google Play.
Earlier this week Google rolled out its Google Play Books service in a handful of new countries as well, including: New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand & Vietnam.
Google just launched biking navigation and directions for the Android version of Google Maps in 10 countries.
The countries —Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom— also got desktop biking directions last month. Today’s rollout specifically includes voice-guided Google Maps Navigation (beta) for turn-by-turn directions across a half-gigameter of biking lanes.
Google Maps Software Engineer Larry Powelson elaborated:
Today, there are more than 330,000 miles (equal to more than 530,000 kilometers, or half a gigameter) of green biking lines in Google Maps. Dark green lines on the map show dedicated bike trails and paths with no motor vehicles, light green lines show streets with bike lanes and dashed green lines show other streets recommended for cycling. Biking navigation even helps you avoid steep hills.
Check out the official Google Lat Long Blog for more information.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VChOEvKicQQ?rel=0]
Did you know a Google datacenter uses half the energy of a typical industry data center? The search company has gone to great lengths exploring green energy and it’s not just electric cars for employees. Unlike Google’s, about 70 percent of the world’s data centers are lacking the resources and expertise to go green, explains senior vice president of technical infrastructure Urs Hoelzle. Google’s Hamina, Finland facility depicted in the above clip is an example of such environment-friendliness.
Originally a paper-mill built in the 1950s, it takes raw sea water directly from the Gulf of Finland, pumps it through the existing seawater tunnel and runs it through heat exchangers to dissipate the server load heat from the facility. It than routes the warm water to another building where it’s mixed with the fresh sea water so it could be returned to the Gulf at a similar temperature in order to minimize an impact on environment. Investing in such innovations makes sense from the financial standpoint, too…