Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac. He covers Google for 9to5Google.com, the best gadgets and deals on 9to5Toys.com, and delivers a weekly roundup of EV and solar news on Electrek.co. Sometimes he makes weird electronic music as one half of Makamachine.
Contact Jordan with news tips and long-winded complaints:
Google has reportedly just lost its lead electrical engineer working on Google Glass to virtual reality company Oculus VR, which was recently purchased by Facebook for approximately $2 billion. Adrian Wong is still listing Google X, Google’s division that gave birth to Glass and many other experimental projects, as his employer on Google+, but TechCrunch claims they’ve confirmed the departure with sources. He’s also since confirmed his new position at Oculus on his LinkedIn page (pictured above). Expand Expanding Close
Just a day after Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen told CNBC his hit mobile game would return in August, today the developer is teasing a new game currently in development.
Despite reportedly confirming Flappy Bird would make a return, Nguyen’s tweet about his new game reads, “I am making a new game. So people can forget about Flappy Bird for a while.”
There aren’t any other details on the game or a timeframe for release, but Nguyen did provide the screenshot above which appears to show similar gameplay to Flappy Bird.
Google is making some improvements to payments on Google Play that will make it easier for both users and developers to purchase and sell and content. First, Google is introducing PayPal support in 12 countries allowing users to select their PayPal account balance as an option within Google Wallet when making purchases:
Starting today, we’re making it possible for people to choose PayPal for their Google Play purchases in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada. When you make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, you’ll find PayPal as an option in your Google Wallet; just enter your PayPal account login and you’ll easily be able to make purchases. Our goal is to provide users with a frictionless payment experience, and this new integration is another example of how we work with partners from across the payments industry to deliver this to the user.
Countries with PayPal support at launch include Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, United States, United Kingdom.
Next up, Google is expanding its carrier billing and gift card payment options for Google Play to new countries including Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. That brings the total up 24 with the addition of four others and Google Play gift cards are also now available in Germany, Japan and a total of 13 countries.
For developers, Google is adding 13 new countries and introducing improved currency support: Expand Expanding Close
Developer Dong Nguygen confirmed the return date today to CNBC’s Kelly Evans and also claimed that the game would be less addictive, which was originally the main reason he cited for removing the app earlier this year. In addition, the game will also apparently include a multiplayer when making its return.
At its most popular, the original Flappy Bird game was reportedly making as much as $50,000 a day revenue. It didn’t take long for other developers to make clones of the game in order to capitalize on the game’s popularity and many of them remain in the top charts for gaming.
Google announced today that it’s added a Hebrew calendar to Google Calendar that will allow users to display Hebrew calendar dates and holidays next to Gregorian dates:
If you use the Gregorian calendar, it seems like Jewish holidays fall on different dates every year. That’s because Jewish holidays follow the Hebrew calendar, a lunisolar calendar used by many Hebrew speakers around the world that bases its months on lunar cycles and its years on solar cycles.
The feature is available starting today to users on the web. You can enable it by navigating to Settings, General, Alternate calendar and selecting “Hebrew calendar.”
Sony is out today with its earnings report for its fiscal year 2013 ending in March and in it revealed smartphones sales totalling 39.1 million for last year. That’s notable growth for the company’s Xperia smartphones and up from the 33 million units it sold for fiscal year 2012.
For this year, Sony is predicting it will sell approximately 50 million smartphone units.
While Sony noted it experienced “significant increase in sales of smartphones” in addition to a strong launch for PlayStation 4, that unfortunately didn’t help out much overall with the company reporting a net loss of around $1.25 billion US.
Update: Google has just made things official and also let us know its adding bus lines in Vancouver and Chicago. In addition, it also released some updated stats on the progress of transit directions in Maps (pictured below).
On the other side of the globe, Vancouverites looking for sun can now get real-time updates on whether a bus to Kits is faster than one to Third Beach.
In Chicago, Cubs fans can now zip to and from Wrigley Field, armed with the real-time information they need to hop on a bus and avoid congestion on Lake Shore Drive.
Google is about to expand its public transport data in Maps for both desktop and mobile users in the UK. The Guardian notes that the public transport directions were previously only available to users in London but starting tomorrow the feature will become available to users across England, Scotland and Wales with nearly 17,000 new routes.
Users can currently access public transport information for London and the south east, but from Wednesday users on iOS and Android apps and on the desktop version will all be able to search National Express and Traveline data, as well as 1,500 local and national operators such as Centro and Merseyside. Nearly 17,000 routes are included and 34,000 stopping points, ferry ports and stations.
Product manager for public transport in Google Maps David Tattersall gave the following comment to The Guardian:“In Britain, public transport is part of the national psyche. The biggest changes will be on mobile, as devices are becoming more and more powerful and they’re things we spend a lot of time with. We’re aiming to really improve users’ lives.”
Google also plans to add public transport routes for Norther Ireland once it gets its hands on the data.
Google Maps has transit data for 15,000 cities and towns across 64 countries and 6 continents.
Buses, trains and ferries included on Google Maps travel 200 million kilometers every day—that’s the equivalent of driving every single road in the world three times!
Over 2.3 million transit stations can be found on Google Maps
Fun Fact! In the 10 seconds it takes to read a social post, over 30,000 vehicles found on Google maps have left their stations.
Google announced today that it’s adding some improvements to the Hangouts messaging feature built into Gmail on the desktop. Returning are the small green availability indicators next to the profile photos of contacts, and Google is also introducing message snippets, improved search functionality and 80 emoji:
Starting today you’ll see some changes in your conversation list in Hangouts, including message snippets and the return of green “availability” bubbles to make it easier to see which of your friends are currently active. With the new search icon, you can see a list of all your chat buddies and find other friends on Hangouts. And whether you’re happy, grumpy, or any of the other seven dwarfs (plus a few not in the storybook classic), you can set your mood using one of 80 emoji. Your friends will have no problem guessing how you’re feeling that day.
Google says the new features will roll out to Gmail users on the desktop that have opted in to the new Hangouts experience today. If you haven’t already, you can switch to the new Hangouts by clicking your profile picture and selecting “Try the new Hangouts.”
Google is experimenting with a new feature in the latest Canary build of Chrome that will allow Mac OS X users to open files from Finder directly in Chrome web apps running in the browser. As highlighted in the image above from Googler Francois Beaufort, that means you’ll be able to launch, for example, a text document in a Chrome web app like Text instead of using TextEdit, Word or another application installed natively on your Mac. Google is presumably hoping the feature will make using Chrome web apps a smoother experience when transitioning from the browser and back to local file management and native apps.
For now the feature is only available if specifically enabled (details here) in the Chrome Canary build, but there’s a good chance this will eventually make its way to the beta and public releases of Chrome for all Mac users.
The next time you’re looking for a score or recap of a recent NBA game, you’ll find a much smoother experience directly from the Google Search page. Google noted last night that it’s starting to display high-quality video clips from NBA games next to sports scores for related queries (as pictured above).
The new embedded videos play directly on the Google Search page without sending the user to YouTube and appear to becoming directly from the NBA’s official YouTube channel. You can check out an example of the new feature here.
Google says that it plans on adding other leagues in addition to the NBA in the future.
Bloomberg reports California’s Senate has passed a bill that will force smartphone makers like Samsung to implement “technology that would let customers remotely wipe data from their devices and render them inoperable when stolen.” Officials have been attempting to pass similar bills with no luck but have since made tweaks to the legislation removing tablets and other terms.
Under the new bill, smartphones sold in California must include the technology starting in July 2015. While the bill was passing 25-8, the margin in the Democratic-controlled Senate can change as absent members continue to enter votes. The state Assembly, also controlled by Democrats, will consider the legislation next.
Last year Apple and Google introduced new theft deterrent features just as government officials in San Francisco were increasing pressure on smartphone makers to implement such features. While Apple’s new “Activation Lock” feature requires an Apple ID and password to reactivate a stolen phone after being remotely erased/wiped by the owner, it fell short of a full-on kill switch feature that officials were hoping for and required the user to enable it. Google has since introduced similar features for Android devices.
Samsung and Google have yet to respond to comment on the bill, but an Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg the following: Expand Expanding Close
The video above just landed on the official Google Glass YouTube channel as the latest of Google’s promotional/inspirational videos showing off the video capturing capabilities of Glass. As noted by Google, the video was shot entirely on Glass by students from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts as part of its contribution to Google’s Glass Creative Collective. Expand Expanding Close
Following confirmation during an interview with Marissa Mayer at the TechCrunch Disrupt event this week, a version of Yahoo’s popular News Digest app is now available to Android users. Yahoo made the announcement on its blog today where it also noted that new international and Canadian editions of the app have arrived.
Mayer noted in the interview this week that News Digest was one of the company’s mobile apps that its most proud of. The app, which offers users a daily dose of news in a concise format, has been experiencing impressive engagement among users on iOS since launching last year.
Here’s a breakdown of what you’ll get where in terms of the new editions in each country: Expand Expanding Close
Google announced today that it’s rolling out Google Play Services 4.4, the latest release of its suite of tools for Android developers. The update adds a number of notable new features that devs can integrate into their apps including Street View and “new features in Location, Games Services, Mobile Ads, and Wallet API.”
For location, Google is now letting developers detect when users are running or walking. Previously developers could only detect if users were in a vehicle, on a bike, or on foot. The big announcement, however, is the ability to embed Street View imagery from Maps: Expand Expanding Close
Google announced today that it has acquired marketing platform Adometry to help improve its Google Analytics products. In the short-term, Adometry will continue to offer its products and support its current customers but also work with Google to make the platform available to Analytics customers:
We’re deeply committed to the customers and relationships we have cultivated over the years. Adometry will continue to offer the same excellent service our clients have come to expect, and there will be no immediate changes to our current offerings or contracts. We’ll be reaching out to all of our customers individually to discuss future plans in the coming weeks.
Google said that it would be using Adometry to complement its “existing measurement & analytics offerings” for Google Analytics Premium, while Adometry noted it will work with the Google Analytics team “to offer great attribution solutions for both our customers and theirs.” A little on the Adometry platform and how it works from the company:
Tumblr today released an updated version of its app for Android that allows users for the first time to customize the look and design of their blog directly from within the app. While you could always post and edit content to your blog from the app, the update means you’ll now be able to also edit your blog’s theme— change colors, fonts, pictures, etc— through the mobile app.
You now have total control over how your blog looks in the app. Colors, fonts, pictures, whatever—however you want to look, you can look that way. Download this thing and make your blog look amazing already.
You’ll be able to make changes to layout, color, font, etc through a WYSIWYG-style UI similar to on the web and also view a live preview of the changes before going live.
Google’s Play Music All Access subscription streaming service is today arriving for Canadian users almost a year after first launching in the U.S. and Europe. A report from the CBC notes that Google is expected to make an official announcement today ahead of the Canadian Music Week event kicking off May 6.
Like it did last year after inking a partnership with Major League Baseball, T-Mobile is once again offering free access to the MLB At Bat apps on iOS and Android. Tmonews points us to official confirmation from a T-Mobile support employee:
“UPDATE: As the official sponsor of Major League Baseball, we will be offering MLB At Bat 14 to our customers for free starting May 1 through the entire regular season! With our unlimited data and nationwide 4G LTE, you can enjoy all the great features MLB’s At Bat has to offer!”
That’s instead of paying for one of several MLB subscriptions that grants access to the app starting at $2.99 monthly or $20 for the entire season. There’s no word from T-Mobile with the official details yet, but we’d imagine customers will get access to all the live games and content apart from premium features available to $115/per year MLB.TV Premium subscription.
Sony announced today on its blog that it’s offering even more free content to Xperia Z2 owners in addition to the 6 free movies, 8 games, and more already offered with the device. Through the Xperia Lounge app, Xperia Z2 users will be able to download what Sony says is roughly $350 worth of content. The freebies, listed below, come with a “a three-month subscription to Evernote premium, 50GB of storage on Box for life, a full subscription to OfficeSuite Pro” and 10 free Xperia themes:
• Garmin, Full Suite
• OfficeSuite Pro Full version
• Box 50GB for life
• Evernote premium, 3mths
• Bitcasa 1TB storage, 3mths
• 10 Xperia themes
• Social live premium, 1mth*
• Three additional games and apps
Sony noted that some of the new content is also available to Xperia Z1 and Xperia Z1s users.
Samsung today launched a new app exclusively for Galaxy owners that allows them to stay up to date with the latest from Lebron James and the Miami Heat. Think Twitter, but the only person you’re able to follow is Lebron. Yes, it’s absolutely a strange move. But with Lebron already on the payroll as one of the company’s main spokespeople, it’s not too surprising that Samsung is trying to get its money worth and offer Galaxy owners exclusive content in the process.
Kantar Worldpanel has released its latest numbers on US smartphone penetration just as IDC, Strategy Analytics are releasing numbers on smartphone shipments globally. In the US, with smartphone market penetration growing 10 percentage points since last year, much of that growth is attributed to Android as Apple’s share with iOS slips year-over-year.
The report puts Android at 57.6 percent of the US smartphone market as of March of this year. That’s up from 49.3 percent last year and compares to iOS with 35.9 percent marketshare this year down from 43.7 percent in March last year. Windows, BlackBerry, and the “Other” category pretty much remained flat, so the story here is that growth of the smartphone market in the US has also meant growth for Android and some of it at the expense of iOS. Expand Expanding Close
Facebook has released a notable updated with version 5.0 of its Messenger app for Android today. In the update, Facebook has made it easier than ever to share content in messages with new quick links for sending photos, voice messages, stickers, and accessing the camera to snap a photo.
Version 5.0 also introduces faster search for looking up names of people and groups and the ability to send video from your device’s gallery and play video within messages directly in the app. Facebook notes that the new video feature only works on devices running Android version 4.3 and up currently.
More ways to message: Now it’s easier to send photos, voice messages and more
Video: Send videos from your gallery and play them right in the app. (Works on Android 4.3 and up. We’ll continue to improve video and bring it to more phones.)
Instant photo sharing: Take a photo and send it in just one tap.
Stickers shortcuts: When someone sends you a sticker, press and hold down on it to get the pack.
Faster search: Just enter the names of people and groups
We’ve been seeing more and more leaks in recent weeks for the upcoming LG G3, the company’s follow up to last year’s flagship LG G2 smartphone. Just yesterday the company confirmed that the device was excepted to launch within two months sometime during the second fiscal quarter, and shortly after an image appearing to be the backside of the device leaked online.
While there is no way of confirming if the event is indeed for the LG G3, the timeline would make sense and events happened simultaneously in New York, San Francisco, and London hint that a major announcement is planned. LG is also repeatedly planning a new smartwatch lineup that’s expected to make an appearance this summer.
Leaked specs for the LG G3 so far have included a quad-HD display, 2.3 GHz SnapDragon, Android 4.4.2, and a 16 megapixel camera. Other leaks have recently shown off a new flatter UI expected to arrive with the LG G3. Expand Expanding Close
Facebook has released a notable updated with 