Chance currently writes for both 9to5Google and 9to5Mac, in addition to 9to5Toys. He has previously written for several other online publications. He uses a Nexus 5, iPhone 5s, iPad Air, Hackintosh, and Macbook Air.
Google is rolling out a new Google+ feature today that makes it easier to see what your friends have +1’d and for your friends to see what you have +1’d. Only a few posts will be highlighted, and Google says you have ultimate control over who will see your +1s.
We’ll occasionally highlight posts that were +1’d by people in your circles
And if you +1 a post, we may highlight it to your friends as well
You can visit your settings to decide who, if anyone, might see your +1s highlighted in the stream
In all cases: friends will only see +1s and posts they already had permission to see, we’re just calling extra attention to them
And of course: if you’re seeing too much activity from a given circle, you can always turn down its volume, or exclude it from Home entirely
There’s been a lot of interest surrounding the wearable computing market recently, with Apple going on an iWatch trademarking binge and the Pebble being released to Best Buy locations around the country. Samsung, who you have to figure is interested in the wearable market, showed off its vision for the future of wearables at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco (via AllThingsD).
Samsung chief strategy officer Young Sohn showed a video full of concepts for wearable devices. Specifically, the video focused on the health benefits of wearable computing. It shows a women using her device to quickly send health test results to her doctor. “We think the health area is a really key area of innovation,” Sohn later said. Samsung things that, though the market for wearable devices is small at the moment, it will rise quickly when the technology is further integrated into watches, glasses, and more. The video also shows Samsung’s vision for displays and how you could be able to easily expand and compress your device to get a larger or smaller form factor.
We haven’t heard too much about a Samsung wearable device, but we have to imagine that it is in the forecast, as both Google and Apple are reportedly eying the market. Expand Expanding Close
Google on Tuesday began rolling out Chrome 28 to Windows and Mac users, though the main selling point of the update is only available to the former of those operating systems. With this update, Windows users will begin to see richer notifications than in previous builds. The rich notifications have been available in the beta build of Chrome for Windows for over a month, but only now is it rolling out to all users.
The new notifications offer a way to easily and quickly reply to emails, see calendar alerts, control music, and more. If you miss a handful of alerts, you can open up the new “notification center” to view them all at once.
We’ve designed these notifications to be beautiful, useful and engaging. They can display formatted text and images, and can include actions directly inside the pop-up (so you can respond to that email right away). Missed a bunch of notifications while you were taking a coffee break? No problem — you can open up the notification center to see them all in one place.
Hot on the heels of an iOS update this morning, Tumblr for Android has been updated with some new search and discovery features. You now have the ability to search for tags and blogs, as well as explore trending tags and blogs, and follow recommended blogs. Various bugs have been fixed, as well.
Last week, tech pundit Leo Laporte announced that he had been invited to an event on Google’s campus on July 10th by Motorola’s Guy Kawasaki. According to him, only a small number of journalists were invited, with the same event being held on July 11th for another group of people. Many people speculated that this was where Motorola would unveil the highly anticipated X Phone. According to a report out of AllThingsD, however, the event is not for any product announcements and is purely a “private event” being held by Kawasaki.
Facebook’s Home launcher for Android received a minor update this afternoon, simply adding the ability to create folders on the home screen, a feature teased last month. The process is identical to stock Android devices. Simply drag on icon on top of another and a folder will be created. Expand Expanding Close
As it does every month, Google has just updated the Android distribution data to reflect the month of July. Jelly Bean is now running on 37.9 percent of devices, with 32.3 percent of those running Android 4.1.x. That’s up from 33 percent this time last month. Gingerbread fell from 36.5 percent to 34.1 percent, which makes Jelly Bean the most used Android operating system. Ice Cream Sandwich is now at 23.3 percent, down from 25.6 percent last month.
Froyo is now at 3.1 percent (was at 3.2 percent), Eclair has fallen to 1.4 percent (was at 1.5 percent), Honeycomb and Donut are both now at just 0.1 percent.
Google collects this data during the first week of each month by logging the devices that access the Play Store. It use to be that the data was collected when the device simply checked-in to Google servers. Expand Expanding Close
Alongside the iOS and Mac update that rolled out earlier this afternoon, Twitter for Android has also been updated with several new features. Most notably, direct messages now sync across all of Twitter’s official apps (Mac, iPad, Web, Tweetdeck, mobile web, Android). Before today, if you read a direct message on your desktop, it would still be marked as unread on your phone.
Now when you read a Direct message it will be marked as read in all of your official Twitter apps (including twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for Mac, Twitter for iPad and TweetDeck) and vice versa.
As you search you can now see user avatars and clear past searches from the dropdown menu
Richer search results indicate when there are new Tweets for your query and show account results with bios and social context
Missing from this update is the new reply field that iOS devices got, but hopefully that feature comes sooner rather than later. Expand Expanding Close
In honor of the 100th Tour De France, Google has published an interactive game that takes you through each stage of the event. The game, called Your Tour, takes you through the entire 3,000km route with a combination of Google Maps and Streetview data. You start off on June 29th at the “Grand Depart” and move through each stage, though some are still locked until the event actually happens in real life.
The game is centered around using your mouse to scroll along each stage of the event. You can choose between a realistic view from the eye of the bike rider, or a simple Google Maps interface.
Over the weekend, Techdy released high quality video of a makeshift budget iPhone with glued together parts, and now the same company has released a video showing the device running Android. The company is selling the device, dubbed the Basic Bear, for just $199. It features a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor and the same 4-inch 1136×640 Retina display as the iPhone 5. The device is made from a polycarbonate material and feels much sturdier than the Galaxy S line of devices, according to the company.
Based on the design of Apple’s budget iPhone, we have made an Android
version called the Basic Bear. It rocks a 4 inch display (1136 x 640),
1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage, 8
megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 2 megapixel camera w/ 1080p HD
video recording, Qi-wireless charging expansion slot, 2300 mAh
battery, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and much more. The best part? It
costs just $199, and comes in 5 vibrant colors.
For more information, visit our Techdy store: http://techdy.com
For what it’s worth, the company also sells a Bear Pro, with a design similar to the HTC One for $249. Expand Expanding Close
Update: LG has sent out another invite to the same event, this time with an image the same as the one in the video.
Last month, LG sent out a press invite to an event on August 7th and given all the leaks and rumors, almost everyone assumed the event would be for the LG G2, a successor to the Optimus G flagship. LG has now released a video teaser for the event that essentially confirms that it will be for the G2.
Throughout the entire video, a man walking through New York City sees “To me, you are perfect. From G…” posted everywhere, from benches to taxis to graffitied walls. The video ends with a slide reading “Great 2 have you” with the date and time for the event listed below.
We’re still about a month away from the August 7th event, but we’ll be sure to bring you everything you need to know regarding LG’s next flagship. Expand Expanding Close
Update: According to a source speaking with CNET, Motorola does not plan to unveil the X Phone at the press briefings next week, saying the event is about “something else.”
We already know a lot about the upcoming Moto X Phone. Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside announced it at the D11 conference earlier this year, and since then, we’ve seen images, specs, and details regarding customization options leak. The main thing we need to know is when it will be announced and when it will be released. On an episode of his This Week in Google show, podcaster Leo Laporte stated that he has been invited to an event at the Google campus on July 10th by Motorola employe Guy Kawasaki. It’s a small event, according to Laporte, with only 50 journalists being invited. The same event will also be held on July 11th with another group of reporters.
There are all sorts of things Moto/Google could have up its sleeves for this event, but Laporte seems pretty adamant about it being the Moto X Phone. It could also be something simple, such as Motorola wanting to further introduce its new strategy with reporters. Given the fact that it will be held on the Google campus, it could also be something entirely unrelated to Motorola, such as Android 4.3. As Google has said before, Motorola is supposed to be operated entirely separate with no direct access to Google.
On the ad released by Motorola earlier this week, two people were jumping into a lake forming “XI” with their bodies. In Roman numerals, X1 is obviously the number 11, which further leads to the possibility of the X Phone being announced at these small events. However, that’s a lot of speculation on top of very little information, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
For all of the details from Leo Laporte (not many) jump to the 40 minute mark in the video below:
Earlier this week we reported on the XE7 update rolling out to Google Glass, which included features such as a web browser and improved voice actions, but the update also includes a few more unannounced lab features (via SelfScreens). As first noticed by +Andrew Wiggin on Google+, the XE7 update includes evidence of a music player, video player, Glass app store, a volume screen, and more.
The music player appears to be dedicated to showing what’s “Now Playing,” and given the lack of storage on Glass, it seems like it will be able to interface with an external iPhone or Android device. The update also includes a handful of labs features, which are features not yet meant for primetime and for developers to play with.
First off, there’s a labs feature entitled “VIDEO_PLAYER,” though no one has been able to figure out how it works just yet. It could be that it’s simply a way to playback videos taken with the device, but there’s always the chance of Glass being able to stream video from your phone. There is also a new Volume card that simply allows you to change the volume of your device . Expand Expanding Close
Following Samsung’s monster profits from yesterday, HTC has now released its unaudited results for Q2 2013 (via TechCrunch). The company reported total revenues of $2.35 billion (NT$70.7 billion) and profits of just $1.63 million (NT$1.25 billion). While the profit is up over the NT$85 million it reported in Q1 2013, it’s still lower than analysts expected and down 83% year over year.
Many were expecting HTC to have a good quarter, as its One flagship is finally available on three major United States carriers and the device was well-received by critics. Sales in May for HTC were up 48.03%, but things nose dived in June, falling 23.88% month-on-month and 26.43% year-on-year.
HTC had hoped that a unified line-up of devices could help it better compete with Samsung, who posted over $8 billion in profit for Q2, but it looks like the struggles for the Taiwanese company are deeper than we thought. Expand Expanding Close
Samsung has released its estimated earnings for Q2 2013, with a full announcement scheduled for later this month. The company estimates profits of $8.33 billion (9.5 trillion won), up nearly $2 billion over Q1’s $6.4 billion profit.
Reuters reports, however that this number was less than the 10.16 trillion won South Korean Analysts were expecting, which they blame on slowed momentum in Samsung’s smartphone division.
“The slowdown in its handset business appears to be worse than expected and the disappointing result simply reindorses the market view that Samsung’s smartphone growth momentum is slowing,” said Lee Sei-chul, an analyst at Meritz Securities.
Samsung’s component division, however, showed solid growth in Q2.
“But it’s got the component side of the business, which is showing solid improvements, and new handset product lineups for the third quarter, so (overall) earnings are likely to grow again in the current quarter.”
Keeping with the tradition upheld since 2000, Google has updated its classic logo to celebrate the Fourth of July in the United States. The Google Doodle takes you on a tour of the United States with a family and a dog. The animated image takes you to a variety of classic U.S. places, including an ice cream shop, the Golden Gate Bridge, a baseball stadium, Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, and more. The Doodle ends with the family and dog all watching fireworks together. Click it once more, and the image redirects to a simple search for “When is Independence day?”
Earlier this week HTC announced that it would not be updating the One S to Android 4.2.2, despite promising the update to users earlier this year. As you can imagine, this news did not go over well with One S owners. We all know that the Android community is a vocal one and won’t take this kind of stuff lightly, and that’s exactly why there is now a petition to get HTC to update the One S to Android 4.2.2 and Sense 5.
The petition, hosted on Change.org, pleads with HTC to rethink its decision to shun the One S from any future updates. More than anything, it seems like the users want an answer. They note that the device is just as powerful as the Galaxy S3, which is getting an Android 4.2.2 update, and that the One S was a great phone and a “highlight of 2012.”
Once again, I strongly urge you to have a rethink about the HTC One S. It is definitely a great phone; a highlight of 2012. It even managed higher benchmarks than your HTC One X and Samsung’s Galaxy S III. Now that’s impressive. It truly is a remarkable device, but your lack of software updates are seriously hampering that.
In a blog post on the official Android Developers site, Google has announced a new section on the Play Store dedicated to showcasing some of the best looking Android apps. The keys to having your app featured, according to Google, are smooth transitions, crisp typography, a clear layout, and subtle design touches.
Attention to detail makes an app truly beautiful: transitions are fast and clear, layout and typography are crisp and meaningful, and design touches that delight you in surprising ways are sprinkled throughout. Today, we’re publishing a new Beautiful Design collection on Google Play, which highlights 11 beautiful apps with these kinds of masterfully crafted design details.
Included in the collection are the following apps:
Pattern – An app for discovering wallpapers
Pocket – A service that lets you save articles for reading later
Eye in Sky Weather – A weather app
Grand St. – A service that aggregates beautifully designed hardware
Pinterest, Expedia Hotels, Flipboard, New York Times, Timer, and TED Expand Expanding Close
Hot on the heels of a report with more details regarding the customization options of the Motorola X Phone, French site NWE has obtained several images showing four colors the device will supposedly be offered in. One is green, one is red, another is blue, and the fourth is a shade of purple. The source, who “wishes to remain anonymous” says the device will be offered in “no less than” 16 color variations.
Earlier today, a report emerged claiming the only aspects that will be customizable about the Moto X Phone are the wallpaper, color, and engraving. Though, apparently, the sensor and awareness features will be the big selling points of the device. Expand Expanding Close
It’s no secret that Google+ has become one of the ultimate sources for animated GIFs, supporting features such as Auto Awesome, which automatically turns a series of pictures into GIFs. Now, the company is rolling out a new feature that allows you to preview a video in animated GIF fashion. Unfortunately, this does not include YouTube videos, but rather videos uploaded straight to Google+. Expand Expanding Close
Back in May, we reported on many of the customization options that would be coming with the Moto X Phone. Our sources claimed the device would be offered with 25+ color options in the form of skins/protections, and now ABC News is reporting something very similar, but with a few more details.
According to the report, users will be able to buy the device in a variety of colors, just as we said earlier. One of the colors will be used for the back case and the other for the trim. Much like with iPhones, iPads, and iPods, users will be able to have a custom message engraved in the back cover, which is something we’ve yet to see with Android devices. Finally, users will supposedly be able to upload a custom photo and have their device arrive with that photo set as the wallpaper.
So the big thing with the Moto X will be the 'awareness' features. Keep an eye on @9to5Google for more on this soon.
More details were also offered regarding the sensors that the X Phone will feature.
The biggest tricks of the phone come with what Motorola has been doing with the hardware sensors, sources say. Instead of having to fumble to find the camera icon or button, users will be able to flick the phone to launch the camera. There are also added voice capabilities, which leverage Google’s advanced voice recognition technology. The phone is said to be smart enough to know when you are driving and will automatically launch the speakerphone function.
Update: The acquisition has now been confirmed by Samsung. In a statement to the New York Times, the company had the following to say:
“Samsung has acquired key talent and assets from Boxee. This will help us continue to improve the overall user experience across our connected devices.”
According to a new report from Israeli business site The Marker (via The Jewish Press), Samsung has purchased Boxee, the company behind the home theater PC software and set-top box that lets users stream content on their TV and computer. The report claims that Samsung paid around $30 million for the company and will continue to employ Boxee’s 40 workers.
Boxee has been looking for a buyer or more funding for the past few months. It was reported last month that the company had found a buyer, but this is the first specific information we have heard about a possible acquisition.
Samsung is an interesting buyer for sure. More than likely, the company would use the team’s talent to improve its Smart TV software, but it’s also possible that the two companies could work on some sort of video streaming service, as well, possibly based off of Google TV. Expand Expanding Close
Motorola’s latest flagship device, the Moto X Phone, is set to be released sometime this fall, but despite not having released any images of it, the company is getting ready to run its first ad for the phone. The ad, as shown by Ad Age, shows some definite Google influence, as well as the logo we reported on last month.
The ad is centered around the Fourth of July festivities and focuses on the fact that it is made in the United States.
“What we are doing which is very different is assembling [Moto X smartphones] here in the U.S. in our assembly plant in Ft. Worth, Texas,” Motorola’s VP-global brand and product marketing Brian Wallace said in an interview. “What better time than July 4th to come with a message like that?”
