Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. You can find his current work at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google 9to5Toys, Electrek, and more. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.
Android tablets have been capable of handling multiple users since Android 4.2, and being able to do this on our Android smartphones has been a long-time request from the community. Today, it looks as if Google has confirmed — by way of the Android issue tracker — that this is a feature coming to the “next public build” of Android (via Android Police).
In the company’s first transparency report, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has revealed some information regarding the site’s censorship under infamous European “right to be forgotten” laws — and it’s clear that he’s not very happy with the people who take advantage of them. This isn’t the first time Wales has spoken out against censorship, but now he’s making it very clear that he feels governments are going just a bit too far.
Google quietly launched an interesting new feature within Google Maps yesterday: the ability to explore both Mars and the Moon. As you may know, you’ve been able to do this with the desktop Google Earth app for quite some time — but this is the first time it has come to the web via the ubiquitous mapping platform. To access the new feature, head over to Maps, click the “Earth” button in the bottom-right, zoom all the way out, and wait for the ‘Moon’ and ‘Mars’ options to appear as seen in the screenshot above. Alternatively, you can just click these links: goo.gl/OopkP0 (Mars), and goo.gl/CoVGQ9 (Moon).
While Android Wear had its big launch all the way back in June, we’re still waiting for what might be the most exciting smartwatch ever — the Moto 360. The much-anticipated device may not be out yet (although it’s slated to hit before the end of the summer), but Motorola has definitely done a great job of teasing it over and over again, and part of that has been its black and white watch face that fits it ever so stylishly. Now you can get that face on your G Watch or Gear Live. The face is called Woto Watch Face, and I think it does a great job of replicating the watch face that Motorola has been showing off. It’s free on the Play Store, and works with any Android Wear device.
A beta update for the ridiculously popular WhatsApp messenger for Android has been released with official support for Android Wear, extending its wrist capabilities beyond just viewing and clearing notifications. Among the additions that are included in the update are stacked notifications, complete preview of received messages and, most importantly, the ability to reply to messages with voice.
We’ve seen our fair share of Samsung Galaxy Alpha rumors, and it looks to be the handset that the Korean company is prepping to take the lead in the upcoming battle of next-generation of flagship smartphones. We’ve seen it pictured plenty of times now, but this is the first time we’ve seen it in white.
Amazon has announced this morning that a slew of new media apps are now available for your enjoyment on the Fire TV. On top of the platform’s already large number of apps, you can now access WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney Jr., MLB.TV, Animal Planet L!ve, and the WWE Network. The company says that even more are coming though, including WATCH ABC, NFL Now, A&E, Lifetime, and more.
The press release also touts the company’s TV gaming endeavors including its exclusive deal with Rovio to bring Angry Birds Family to the Fire TV. The company says that many more apps and games are on their way to the platform, and that this is just the beginning.
New services include WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney Jr., MLB.TV, Animal Planet L!ve, and WWE Network, and more are already on the way—by the end of the year TV services such as WATCH ABC, WATCH ABC Family, NFL Now, A&E, Lifetime, Outside TV, Young Hollywood, North Face TV, Fashion TV, Green TV andDailymotion will all be available to Fire TV customers.
For the first time, overall usage of iOS as an operating system has fallen behind its main competitor from over in Mountain View. While it’s well known that the majority market share in terms of install base has long been held by Android, this is one figure in which iOS has been top dog for quite some time. But at least according to research from Net Applications, that’s no longer the case. More people now use Android, too.
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via <a href="http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-27-at-11.36.46.jpg">TecnoBuffalo</a>
Pioneering the Android Wear platform, the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live have been met with mixed reviews as of yet. Most thoughts on the smartwatches have been about Android Wear as an operating system, but little has been said about either device’s actual hardware. It appears, though, that some thoughts are now coming out about the LG G Watch, and it doesn’t look so good.
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Android Wear devices are being used to do quite a few awesome things, and now we can add being a remote control for the Tesla Model S to the list. It was about a year ago that we first saw this capability come to Google Glass via the GlassTesla app, and now it looks like the lucky few owners of the Tesla Model S can do the same kinds of remote control actions via their wrist.
Google has updated the Google Glass GDK documentation to include support for external webcams attached via an On-The-Go cable (via Android Police). This means that, while developers already have access to the standard built-in Glass camera, they will now be able to incorporate additional camera views in their apps. Sadly, webcams won’t be Plug-and-Play, so developers are going to have to provide their own drivers for the hardware they want to use.
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A report out today thanks to the Wall Street Journal says that Google tried to buy Spotify late last year. The person familiar with the matter says that talks fell through for a variety of reasons, but a big one was that the company was asking a very high price in order to be bought out. Also, the person says that Larry Page isn’t quite fond of subscription services in general, and it doesn’t seem that helped negotiations much.
The eBay-owned app RedLaser — available for quite some time now on mobile platforms — has today landed on Google Glass. Using the well-known “OK Glass” voice command, you can use RedLaser to quickly price check products you see on the shelf in front of you. But the app doesn’t stop there, letting you also find products that are physically within your vicinity.
Amazon has launched its first entry into the mobile wallet space with a new app called “Amazon Wallet,” now available in beta on the Amazon Appstore and the Play Store (via TechCrunch). Sadly, the app is oddly incapable in its current state, and doesn’t quite live up to the promise of being a true competitor to PayPal and Google Wallet — it can’t currently store credit cards or debit cards and is mostly geared at storing your gift cards and loyalty cards.
Google announced the Little Box Challenge earlier this year, and in the name of progress, the company plans to give away $1,000,000 to a team of people capable of shrinking the power inverter to the size of a tablet. Today, Google officially launched the contest and detailed what it’s going to take to grab that million dollars — and is now taking applications for teams to get on board.
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Google Glass has seen its fair share of emergency and medical use cases, but today it was announced (via MarketWatch) that CrowdOptic, a provider of broadcasting software for Glass, has partnered with ProTransport-1 to bring said software to the company’s ambulances and “mobile medicine” units.
Shortly after its unveiling, an actual copy of the Android L keyboard pulled straight from the Developer Preview OS appeared on the Play Store thanks to a developer by the name of Shen Ye. And while it was pulled after two short weeks because it violated Google’s policies, Ye has now taken the keyboard to the Amazon Appstore to hopefully avoid any future conflict.
When Android Wear first launched, it was unclear whether Google was going to be offering official support for third-party watch faces. This uncertainty definitely didn’t stop developers from just going ahead and making some, but Google has today come out to say that they’re “hard at work” on an official watch face API.
Google has seemingly skipped right over XE 19, tonight pushing the XE 19.1 update to Google Glass users. The latest version of the Glass software features a redesigned voice menu as well as much more reliable connectivity. For moving up an entire version number, this actually looks to be a relatively minor update.
Google Glass has had a mixed bag of reception, and it worries some that Google has made clear that it’s still more of an experiment while Android Wear devices have already gone on to be full-fledged products. And that’s probably because it’s simply not ready for the public, yet. The device’s roller coaster of good and bad press is definitely an example of this, but Tom’s Guide got a chance to sit down with Chris Dale, head of communications and public affairs for Google Glass, who says nothing we’ve seen is really a surprise.
Google has released an updated version of the Google Chrome application for iOS today, bringing at least one interesting new feature to the app: mobile websites that have Cast support will now work with all of your Cast-capable devices. It’s unclear how the feature works at the moment, but according to the release notes, developers are going to need to add support to their webpages before they can take advantage of the feature.
Also, as will likely be praised by iOS users everywhere, the version 36.0.1985.49 update goes the way of Google Hangouts and finally gets rid of the infamous “lip” located at the bottom of the app icon:
The Minuum keyboard has already been announced to be in development for the Moto 360, but today the company demoed its keyboard actually running on another Android Wear device — the LG G Watch. Last time we only got a concept, but now we have a real-time video demo of a slick — albeit (intentionally?) cramped — keyboard running on Android Wear. And Minuum says they’re ready to send out its earliest release.
Google today announced a new initiative it is calling “Project Zero,” a broad attempt at reducing the number of internet users that are harmed every day by a variety of different types of targeted attacks. Google believes that everyone should be able to use the internet without constant worry that attackers might use software vulnerabilities nefariously, and due to that, the Mountain View corporation has assembled a team of experienced security researchers to help improve security across the internet.
The Galaxy Note has, since its inception, sported an ‘S Pen’ stylus for interacting with its larger, phablet-sized screen. But a new patent published by Samsung in South Korea suggests that this little accessory may be moving away from using a digitizer and toward being ultrasound-powered (via SamMobile).