The popular third-party keyboard SwiftKey for Android has been updated today with minor performance enhancements and five new festive themes in time for the holiday season. The update arrives less than a month after the last major version of SwiftKey was seeded with faster performance and several new languages. The update should be rolling out on the Play Store now.
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Back in October, Amazon updated its official Android app with hidden yet fully functional access to its own app store. Amazon then vaguely mentioned the new feature in a subsequent press release, perhaps hoping the move would go unnoticed. But it hasn’t taken long for Google to catch wind of what happened, and the search company clearly isn’t happy about the move.
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Google has made a couple of updates to its Drive and Docs editors that deliver smarter sharing and make it easier for collaborating with others. Starting today, after adding an email address to the sharing dialogue on either service, you will see profile pictures for each person you’ve added and, after adding two collaborators, suggested recipients based on who you frequently share emails or files with.
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Reddit has hired seven people to join its growing team, among them David Forsythe, a mobile engineer that specializes on Android. The hiring is further evidence that an official Android app for Reddit could be on the horizon, following the company’s acquisition of Alien Blue for iPhone and subsequent rebranding of the app as its official iOS client.
Forsythe did not directly confirm that he will be working on an Android app, although he cites experience building things like web apps and mobile apps in the past. Despite being one of the most highly-trafficked websites online, Reddit surprisingly still lacks a mobile-friendly website for smartphones and tablets.
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Google announced on Thursday that Gmail now supports the Irish language Gaeilge. The historic language is not spoken as the first language of many people in Ireland, but a larger number of people speak Gaeilge as a second language. Gaeilge is also the national and first language of the Republic of Ireland.
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Following the launch of its official iPhone and iPod touch app earlier this year, crowdfunding service Indiegogo has now launched an official Android app on the Play Store. Indiegogo promised that an Android app was coming back in July after its international traffic on mobile devices doubled in the previous year.
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Google announced on Wednesday (via Search Marketing Land) that it will soon shut down Google News in Spain because of a recently passed copyright law in the country that will prove too costly for the service to continue running. The law, which goes into effect January 1, 2015, would require Google to pay licensing revenues to Spanish publishers if their content, including headlines, is included in Google News.
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Facebook introduced a new “Trending” section on the web in January to display trending stories that are frequently shared and discussed on the social network. Today, the company announced that it has improved this feature by organizing trending topics into five categories so that it’s easier for people to explore stories from different sources.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9P3xf85R1w
After brief availability as a beta version, Nokia has now released the full version of HERE Maps for Android on the Play Store. The mapping app enables you to search, navigate or get directions around the world, with the ability to download interactive maps to your smartphone or tablet for offline navigation.
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Shazam for Android received a major update on Wednesday with a redesigned home screen and music player for more conveniently keeping up to date with the latest artists you have identified, finding out what songs friends are listening to and accessing the latest Shazam charts. A brand new Shazam.com was also launched with a Hall of Fame for artists and other new features.
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While the traditional wireless landscape in the United States has consisted of AT&T and Verizon Wireless as the heavyweights and Sprint and T-Mobile as the underdogs, the divide between the carriers appears to be quickly narrowing. Sprint and T-Mobile have both introduced highly-competitive plans and promotional offerings in the fourth quarter, leading many consumers to switch carriers at a higher-than-average pace.
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If you can afford to spend upwards of $200,000 on a brand new Lamborghini, then chances are you are doing quite well for yourself. If that is the case, then look no further than the luxury car maker’s new Tauri 88 smartphone in gold and leather. For just $6,000, you are getting an Android-based smartphone with some impressive specifications under the hood. You can’t miss this deal.
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While YouTube remains the gold standard for uploading videos online, a new study finds that its presence on Facebook is increasingly declining as page owners opt to upload more video directly to the social network over sharing YouTube embeds. The latest research from social media analytics company Socialbakers reveal that, in November, the number of Facebook videos uploaded directly to the site overtook the number of YouTube videos on Facebook for the first time ever.
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Many details surrounding the Nexus 6 were leaked in the months leading up to the smartphone’s launch in late October, although one oft-rumored tech specification that proved to be absent was a fingerprint scanner akin to Touch ID on the iPhone. The initial reports calling for a fingerprint scanner weren’t necessarily wrong, however, based on new evidence uncovered in Android’s open source code.
Ars Technica reports that Google was prepared to include fingerprint scanner support for both the Nexus 6 and Android Lollipop, although a commit message filed through Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in late August called for removal of that support on “Shamu,” the internal codename for what ultimately became the Nexus 6. The commit simply read “shamu: remove fingerprint support.”
When a content creator uploads a video to YouTube with music, an automated system called Content ID automatically matches the clip against an extensive database to see if the audio is permitted or infringes copyright. Yet, until now, it was impossible for a YouTube creator to know whether a specific track was allowed or not until after uploading a video.
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The latest version of Google Play Services for Android is now available to developers through Android SDK Manager. Google Play Services 6.5 features several new developer features for its Maps, Fit, and other APIs. Moreover, there is a new “lite mode” that allows developers to include a static map image in locations that would normally make it impractical or impossible to manipulate the map.
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Google on Monday released Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for building and managing apps. The tool, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, was under development for the past two years and is intended to replace Eclipse as the official Android IDE for developers.
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Google announced on Monday that it has expanded Windows support for Google Cloud Platform by releasing three enhancements to Google Compute Engine for running Windows-based workloads. The additions will make it easier for Windows users to leverage the performance and scale of Google data centers.
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Sony announced on Wednesday that Android 5.0 Lollipop is rolling out this week for the Xperia Z Ultra Google Play Edition, while confirming that other devices in the Xperia Z lineup will receive the latest software version in early 2015. Sony pledged in October that it would bring Android Lollipop to its entire lineup of premium Z-series devices.
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Google announced on Wednesday that it has fundamentally changed its reCAPTCHA security feature by removing CAPTCHAs entirely and adding a one-step solution for users to prove they aren’t robots. Instead of typing a few warped words, the new version of reCAPTCHA simply has a box labeled “I’m not a robot” that users can hover over.
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SwiftKey announced on Tuesday that it has collaborated with Intel on an ambitious project for the past two years: improving the communication system of Stephen Hawking. The custom keyboard maker makes it easier for the well-known scientist, who has motor neurone disease, to predict full words, based on a small sensor activated by a muscle in his cheek.
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Samsung on Wednesday announced that it will be repurchasing $2 billion worth of its own common and preferred stocks to increase shareholder value through securing share price stability. Samsung investors have become increasingly worried in recent months as the South Korean electronics maker has faced declining Galaxy smartphone sales.
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If you have been aiming to get your hands on the latest Moto 360 smartwatch this holiday shopping season, look no further than Staples. Thanks to a storewide 25% off coupon, the office retailer is selling the Moto 360 in Stone Leather or Black Leather for just $187.49 online.
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Google has just announced an expanded casting queue for Chromecast with the addition of seven news apps for streaming your favorite shows, sports, games and movies. The new arrivals this holiday season include Comedy Central, Sesame Street Go, Nickelodeon, EPIX, YuppTV and Encore, while TuneIn provides access to international radio stations and millions of podcasts.
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