Jordan Kahn

Acer today announced the launch of a new Chromebook, although those familiar with the company’s current C7 Chromebook will already be familiar with the new model. Apart from a drop from 4GB of RAM to 2GB, the only difference between the old C7 Chromebook and the new Chromebook C720-2848 is the price. Dropping down from 2GB of RAM also brings the price down to $199, down from the $249 Acer charges for the old 4GB model.

Otherwise specs remain the same: an 11.6-nich 1366 x 768 display, dual-core Intel® Celeron® processor, 16GB SDD, and three USB ports. The old model is still for sale, but now Acer officially has one of the most affordable Chromebooks on the market with its new $199 option. It’s already available on BestBuy and should hit other outlets shortly. 
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According to a new report from Bloomberg, Samsung plans to take the curved display technology it used to make its recently launched Galaxy Round smartphone one step further with a new Galaxy device next year. The device will apparently feature a curved display that “wraps around the edges” forming a three-sided screen:
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Google today announced it’s adding a handy new feature to its Google Flight Search tool that allows users to find and book flights. Now, when viewing a flight on Google Flight Search on the web or your mobile device, you’ll be able to hit a small star icon that will save your flight to a “Save Flights” section. The tool will be nice for times when you don’t want to immediately book a flight but might want to view or book it at a later time. Saving the flight will make sure you can easily do so from a new Saved Flights section on any device:

When I’m signed in to my Google account on my mobile phone or tablet, and find a flight option I’m interested in  I click the star button to add it to my saved flights list… I can then access my saved flights on any device at any time by clicking the star icon on the Flight Search home page.

Your saved results won’t be static either. That means when returning Google will make sure your save flights have up to date pricing and any changes that might have occurred to the flight itinerary. You’ll notice the new save button in Flight Search on both the desktop and mobile starting today. 
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After a nearly eight year battle stemming from a lawsuit brought on by authors accusing Google of digitally scanning books without permission, a judge has now officially sided with Google and dismissed the case. Reuters reports:

U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan accepted Google’s argument that its scanning of more than 20 million books for an electronic database, and making “snippets” of text available for online searches, constituted fair use.

“In my view, Google Books provide significant public benefits,” Chin wrote.

The ultimate decision was essentially that by scanning snippets of books to use with Google Books or in search, Google was providing more benefits to the authors than disadvantages. The judge is also quoted as calling the service “an essential research tool” that creates new income for authors and lets users discover content. GigaOM got the following statement from Google, but the Authors Guild is yet to speak out on the decision:
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After announcing a new Google Play for Education store back at Google I/O in May and opening up a pilot program and app submissions in June, Google announced today Google Play for Education has now officially launched for all. In the video below, Google’s Shazia Makhdumi gives an in-depth walkthrough of the new service and notes that Google Play for Education will be the company’s mobile strategy for the 25M students/faculty currently on Google Apps, 3000+ schools using Chromebooks, and over 700,000+ YouTube EDU users.

The Google Play Education store will at first be only available on three tablets: Nexus 7 (a 7” tablet) available today, and the ASUS Transformer Pad (a 10” tablet) or the HP Slate 8 Pro (an 8” tablet), both available early next year. It will allow schools to search for content by subject matter and grade level and provide content that has been recommended by other educators. Instead of using credit cards, teachers will be able to purchase bulk quantities of apps and charge licenses against a balance from the school’s purchase order. The Google Play for Education service will also allow school’s that use Google Apps to instantly distribute an app to multiple devices in a school by setting up a Google Group.
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YouTube announced an interesting new feature for creators today that will allow them to promote their channel across YouTube free of charge. Normally Google charges companies to place those ads that are often displayed at the beginning of YouTube videos, but for YouTube creators, Google will now display video ads for free through a new tool called ‘Fan Finder’.

YouTube is asking creators to submit a channel introduction video ad to Fan Finder, much like the example video ad from Rainn Wilson’s Soulpancake channel in the instructional video below. Once you’ve submitted the ad, Google will automatically turn it into a TrueView video ad and display it across YouTube for users it thinks might enjoy your content. Like normal YouTube ads, users will be able to skip the channel ads after 5 seconds:

We’ll turn your video into a TrueView video ad, which gives viewers the option to skip after 5 seconds. We’ll show your ad for free across YouTube to connect you with brand new fans. Fan Finder takes into account the interactions that viewers have with millions of YouTube channels in order reach the people who are most likely to engage with your channel.

You can learn more about using the new Fan Finder tool here and check out Google’s instructional video for the new ads below:
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That was quick. Shortly after we posted leaked screenshots today of an updated attachments experience for Gmail, Google has now made the announcement official on its Drive blog. As expected, the attachments UI includes much deeper Google Drive integration, allowing users to easily view and save files to Google Drive without having to leave their inbox. You’ll be able to click a new Drive icon next to attachments and select a folder to save to right within Gmail (pictured right).

As you can see in the gif above, the new attachments also include new previews for photos, videos, spreadsheets, PDFs and more, and clicking a preview will launch a new slideshow style full-screen view of the file directly in Gmail. This is what the new full-screen preview mode looks like:
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There has been much talk of Motorola’s upcoming Moto G smartphone in recent weeks, the rumored “mini” follow up to its Moto X flagship launched earlier this year. After making a brief appearance on Motorola’s website, the company started teasing a November 13th live online announcement for the device, and now we get what look to be official specs from a German retailer already listing the Moto G. 

The Phone House, a german retailer, today quickly posted and then removed a listing for the Moto G that was caught by The Unwired. On top of listing what we assume are official specs (below), it also quoted a price of £149 (approximately $235 US). That seems a little pricey to be the on-contract price for what many assume will be a budget version of the Moto X, so it could very well be the off-contract price, which compares to the $499 Motorola and carriers charge for the Moto X without a two-year contract. The Moto X currently sells for $99 on contract.

Head below for the full list of Moto G specs:

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To help victims and the ongoing rescue efforts in the Philippines following Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), Google.org’s Crisis Response team has just launched a support site. The site allows people to make contributions through the American Red Cross, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme, and also provides news updates, a crisis map showing evacuation centres and other resources, and a tool to report information about a missing person. 
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Back in May Google rolled out new contextual quick action buttons in Gmail that appeared next to messages in your inbox allowing users to, for example, quickly RSVP to an invitation or check-in to flights. Today Google announced on its Gmail blog that it’s rolling out even more quick action buttons in Gmail. One of the new buttons will allow users to rate and review restaurants and save Google Offers with a single click:

For example, you can rate and review restaurants you ordered from on Seamless and even modify OpenTable reservations—all without opening an email. And for the deal lovers out there, you can conveniently save a promotion from Google Offers with one click, making it easy to find and buy it when you’re ready.

Another new quick action button will allow YouTube and Vimeo uploaders to click a “View video” button next to emails in their inbox to jump right to viewing their finished uploads (pictured below). The same button will also appear for Dropbox, Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. 
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When Motorola launched its first smartphone as a Google company with the Moto X back in August, the big stand out feature for the device was the ability to apply over 2000 customizations at the time of purchase. Motorola let users pick the front, back, and accent colors, match headphone and case colors, and more all though its MotoMaker.com online ordering tool. Unfortunately, until today the MotoMaker tool was exclusive to AT&T with other carriers only selling white and black models of the Moto X.

The good news is AT&T’s exclusivity window has now officially ended and starting today you can order a customized Moto X through Moto Maker from all major US carriers including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
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Google is making some improvements to its Google Cloud Platform today that will make it easier for developers to provide cloud services across apps on multiple platforms. After first launching a preview of Cloud Endpoints earlier this year, Google announced today that the web backend solution for app developers has moved to General Availability. Cloud Endpoints provide developers with an easy way of building a simplified cloud backend to deploy across their web, Android and iPhone apps:
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Today T-Mobile has made things official for availability and pricing on Google’s recently launched Nexus 5. Arriving for online orders Nov. 14 and in stores on Nov. 20, T-Mobile will be offering the 16GB Nexus 5 for $41.99 down with its usual monthly payments of $17. That brings the total cost of the device on T-Mobile up to $450, around $50 more than Google charges for the 32GB model and $100 more than the 16GB model on Google Play. That’s not unusual, however. Google has long subsidized the cost of its Nexus devices sold through Google Play.
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Update:  Google reached out to us to say there is currently no relationship between Google Glass and Rochester Optics

When Google recently announced the second generation Google Glass rolling out to those in its Explorers beta program later this year, it also noted that the wearable will fully support a new line of prescription frames. Now, Rochester Optical, a NY-based manufacturer of lenses and eyewear products, has teamed up with Tim Moore of VentureGlass who struck a deal with Google to provide “custom prescription, fashion, and sport lenses” for Glass. Moore announced the news today on his Google+ page with the image above and linked to a press release from Rochester Optical.

As a state-of-the-art optical laboratory, one of the first wearable technology items Rochester Optical will be producing are custom prescription, fashion, and sport lenses for Google Glass, available for purchase in early 2014

With Tim’s proven background as co-founder of social media agency SayItSocial and founder of Venture Glass, he will provide tremendous value to Rochester Optical in their endeavors in both the retail and the online space. His company, Venture Glass, a wearable technology company, was chosen by Google for their Google Glass project.

While the new Glass will be available later this year, Rochester Optical’s press release notes that its lenses for the device will available to buy in early 2014. 
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Earlier this week Google officially started rolling out a new commenting system on both the desktop and in its Android app. The new system is integrated with Google+ with the goal of finally creating a “better commenting” system on YouTube with more relevant comments and new moderation tools for creators. A revamp of YouTube’s commenting system was a long time coming, but YouTube’s own co-founder isn’t too happy about the change.

Posting his first comment in nearly eight years to the same account that uploaded the first video ever to the service, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim is wondering why he needs a Google+ account to comment on the service he helped create:

“Why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?”

It’s unclear if Karim is truly behind the comment, or perhaps it’s a joke from someone that got a hold of his account. Either way, Karim is not the only one that isn’t too happy about having to link a Google+ account to YouTube in order to continuing commenting. 
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Update: Google also announced today that T-Mobile will now allow MMS messages to be sent to Google Voice users:

T-Mobile has allowed MMS messages from their users to be sent to Google Voice users. Similar to MMS messages from Sprint users, these messages will appear in Gmail, and you can be notified of the message via SMS. We continue to work with other carriers to broaden support for messaging and bring MMS to Hangouts. More good things are coming!

Last month, before an official Nexus 5 and Android 4.4 KitKat announcement, Google announced during its Google+ event that it would soon be integrating SMS into the Hangouts app. Starting today, all Android users can download the updated app, which in addition to building in SMS/MMS functionality, also brings animated GIFs, location sharing, and new status icons.

Also available today is an update for Google Keyboard that introduces some of the improvements Nexus 5 owners have enjoyed with KitKat so far, but many users seem to be upset (rightfully so) that the update makes emojis only compatible on Android 4.4 devices at the moment:
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