Google’s video sharing medium recently celebrated its ninth anniversary and as a look back its rich history Mountain View has shared some interesting statistics about its impact on music. Over 120,000 videos have been inspired by the song Let it Go from Disney’s Frozen and half a million posts have been connected to Psy’s Gangnam Style. While these numbers are indeed impressive, they come up short when compared to the 1.5 million Harlem Shake-themed videos plastered across the web.
Chrome Beta for Android was updated today with a slew of new performance features that should be welcomed by any user. Now available to download from Google Play, the 36th version of Mountain View’s portable browser brings improved text rendering to non-mobile websites and reintroduces Doodles to the new tab page. Chrome Beta users will also be treated to better suggestions for text entry, along with a several bug fixes and performance improvements. If you’ve already updated this app and are tinkering with its new features, be sure to let us know how it’s treating you and your device.
Google has a creative way of advertising its products and its latest effort is quite a doozy. On May 30th at 10:45pm (local time) the company will air a live music performance by Sam Smith from London’s Roundhouse venue that will broadcast across a full ad break on the UK’s Channel 4. So what’s with the quickie concert? It’s an advertising platform for Mountain View’s digital music service.
If you’re looking to upgrade your home’s audio setup, California-based speaker system maker Sonos has an attractive deal worth checking out. The company is currently running a promo that bundles six months of Google Play Music All Access (about a $60 value) with the purchase of any Sonos product, excluding the outfit’s Bridge system.
Building off the success of its mobile apps, ClockworkMod aka Koush has announced AllCast for Chrome. Available today at the Chrome Web Store, this fresh baked software lets you share photos, audio and video from your mobile devices to anything running Chrome, like a desktop, TV or Chromebook. Now before you start queueing up a playlist of content, you’ll wanna make sure that you have the latest version of the AllCast mobile, which is set to hit Google Play later today. In the meantime, you can watch this up-and-comer in action to see what the future might hold for your mobile media collection.
Last year Google snapped up natural language processing engine Wavii for $30 million and eventually pulled the plug on the startup’s iOS app. Fast-forward to today and the company’s founder Adrian Aoun is leaving the firm to focus on a new venture, according to TechCrunch. In addition to departing from Google, Aoun is reportedly taking some of the Wavii team along with him to start up his next company.
Yesterday, Google revealed plans to bring its Chromecast media streaming dongle to the Land of the Rising Sun, but the search giant isn’t stopping there. Today, Mountain View announced that its Chrome OS-powered entertainment stick is now available in Australia, Belgium, Portugal and Switzerland. As with other territories, Chromecast will offer support for local content particular to its market. Google asked some its international team members what they plan on casting and they offered up a few suggestions.
North Korea may not have a reputation for being a warm and friendly place, but if you ever managed to get your Dennis Rodman on and visit the country, it would be helpful to know your way around. Thankfully driving directions for select areas in North Korea are now available from Google Maps. Last year, with the help of its Google Maps Maker tool, Mountain View managed to scale its efforts to survey North Korea’s landscape. As a result, more local driving directions are starting to surface.
After almost being considered vaporware, the Asus PadFone X will soon be available for pre-order. Today, AT&T announced that it will exclusively offer the hybrid device starting on June 6th with financing options as low as $22.92 per month or $200 with a two year service agreement. These options include the smartphone and its docking station that takes the PadFone X from phone to tablet on the fly.
Last year, Google announced that it was working towards dropping Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) support from Chrome before the close of 2014. Today, the company took steps towards keeping its word by removing Chrome Web Store apps and extensions that use the aging cross-platform plugin. Not stopping there, this grand purge also applies to search results and category pages.
After a long battle with YouTubers, Nintendo is ready to compromise. The house that Mario built is ready to play nice with content creators and will soon launch a YouTube affiliate program. According to a pair of tweets from the official Nintendo of Japan Twitter account, the company will share revenue with content producers who make approved gameplay videos under its new YouTube-friendly setup. Nintendo has yet to announce any further details, such as content requirements or when the program will go live, so everyone may not be welcomed. However, it’ll also be interesting to see how this new initiative coincides with the upcoming release of Mario Kart 8, which just so happens to have a YouTube upload feature built directly into the game.
Google announced today that it’s now blocking local Chrome extensions to protect Windows users from malicious software. This means that only extensions coming from the Chrome Web Store can be installed on Chrome for Windows. As an additional safety precaution, Google says that previously installed extensions may automatically be disabled and cannot be restored until they’re hosted in the Chrome Web Store.
Today, LG officially announced its new G3 flagship smartphone and of course it’s coming to America’s big four. The South Korean-made smartphone is set to release sometime this summer and it will ship with a couple of carrier specifics. Sprint will be the only US carrier to offer a gold variant of the handset, so if you’re enjoying emerging hue, you’ll have to ride with the folks in Overland Park, Kansas. T-Mobile and AT&T have confirmed that they’ll both carry the LG G3, with the former boasting an opportunity to win the device before its official release.
The budget tablet market has just gained a $110 contender from Toshiba and its offerings aren’t half bad. Today, the company announced the Excite Go, a 7-inch slab that features a 1,024 x 600 display, a quad-core Intel Atom processor, up to 16GB of storage space and Android 4.4 KitKat. While these specs may not knock your socks off, they’re fairly generous when compared to HP’s latest budget-friendly tablet, which ships with a similar asking price.
In order to take the world by storm, Google has to expand the Chromecast’s availability and that’s what the company appears to be doing. The media dongle recently became available in South Korea and tomorrow it’ll officially go on sale in Japan for ¥4,200 (around $41). Local content providers such as Docomo will provide support for Chromecast, as well as Google’s in-house brands like YouTube and Google Play. to prepare Japanese customers for the Chromecast experience, Mountain View has released a promo video showing off some of its media stick’s capabilities. Here’s a look at what will be available in Japan starting tomorrow.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWG5-ZfoxXI]
(via Google)
When Google announced the Chromecast last year, we knew that the search giant’s media stick would be used to stream a wide variety of media types. So it’s no surprise that one of the adult entertainment industry’s biggest players has adopted support for the company’s budding new platform. The MindGeek-owned operation PornHub now offers Chromecast as a streaming option from its mobile website when visiting it from Chrome for Android.
Setting a voice reminder in Android just got easier. In the past you’d speak your piece and tap a button to confirm what you wanted, but there had to be a better way. While this worked, the general idea behind voice controls is reducing the number of actual button presses needed to complete a task. Obviously aware of this, Google has silently added voice confirmation to reminders. It’s a minimal update, but it’s highly appreciated. After launching Google Now and requesting a reminder, you can now finalize things by saying yes. In the case of the Moto X, it eliminates button tapping altogether. Go ahead and give it a try.
(via Android Police)
If you’re a working stiff looking to get out of a rut, you may want to pass your resume along to Google. A recent survey from Glassdoor ranked the search giant as the top US employer for benefits and pay. According to the study, engineers at Google take home an average salary of around $128,000 annually. The company’s closest tech-related competitor, Facebook came in third place with an average engineer salary of $120,000. Surprisingly absent from the listing’s top accolades was Google’s Silicon Valley rival Apple, which didn’t break into the survey’s top 25. This research is based on voluntary information from employees from each company, so it’s pretty much an account of how employees feel about their jobs. It’s well documented that Google offers some cushy benefits beyond traditional health insurance and retirement packages. Some of Google’s most noteworthy perks include gourmet meals, extra free time for creativity, on-site daycare and additional paid for the birth of a child.
L’Oréal’s lead marketing executive is heading to Google. After little over three years with the cosmetics maker, Marc Speichert is taking his talents to Mountain View to help the company court new advertising partners. He’ll report to former Procter & Gamble exec, Kirk Perry who joined the search giant last fall.
Sure, you could plug a Chromecast into your regular smart TV, but where’s the fun in that? Today, Hisense announced the availability of its new 55-inch LED TV that might just make you try something crazy. In addition to a sub-$700 price tag and 120Hz refresh rate, this slim boob tube just so happens to run Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. So you’ll be able to run several media-friendly apps like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video and Chrome.
Google’s home state, California will start granting driver’s licenses to driverless cars in September. The DMV will charge $150 a pop for an autonomous car’s driving permit and will allow the self-driving vehicles to cruise public roads as long as the automobile meets the state agency’s strict requirements. California will issue licenses to autonomous vehicles if its test drivers are employed by its manufacturer and have the proper permits and documentation. The car’s driver/passenger must remain behind the wheel at all times and be ready to take over if needed. This doesn’t sound too bad, right? But here comes the boom.
Despite some folks declaring it clinically dead, Google+ recently received a new feature known as Stories that lets users share artsy images of places they’ve been while geotagging the locations they’ve visited. Think of it as a way to create a virtual scrapbook for your next vacation. Google said that its new app would be available sometime this week and today appears to be the day. Now available to download from Google Play, the refreshed software also features an updated menu and quick hangout chat access and directions to friends who share their location with you. So there you have it folks. Google+ is alive and well and ready to share your latest adventures.
If you’re in the market for a new tablet but you’re balling on a budget, the $100 HP 7 Plus might be a contender. This low-priced slab features a 1GHz Allwinner A31 ARM Cortex-A7 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage space, a humble 2-megapixel rear-facing shooter with a lackluster 0.3Mp front-facing camera. These aforementioned goodies are powered by Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and are wrapped up in a 7-inch 1,024 x 600 IPS display.
Apple says it’s resolved an iMessage server issue that was affecting former iPhone users who switched to Android and other mobile operating systems. This is all good and well, but Apple’s text message woes don’t end there. The company is currently working on another SMS intercepting issue, according to Re/code. Apple is struggling to keep track of phone numbers that used to be linked to its iMessage platform. This is causing some ex-iPhone owners’ text messages to be absorbed by the company’s servers before reaching their intended contact.