The Drive web app has received a slight revamp this morning that brings it in line with the Material Design of current Google sites. Additionally, Drive on the web is getting better downloads support, especially for large files and Google Forms.
A few months after its announcement, Google finally released Duo earlier this week. Google originally introduced us to Duo at Google I/O with the idea that it would make video chat as simple as it could be, and it does, however, most video calling apps also feature the ability to make voice calls. Right now Duo does not, but it will soon.
Chrome 54 is currently in the Dev channel and includes a revamped New Tab page on Android that lists recommended articles from Google Now (via Android Police). Enabled by default for most Chrome Dev users, the feature is quite useful and hopefully makes its way to other platforms.
Following its first international expansion to Australia and New Zealand this May, YouTube Red is now available in Mexico (via Android Police). The service provides subscribers with ad-free YouTube, offline videos, and more for just 99 pesos a month.
Google has made huge inroads into the education market thanks to Chromebooks and Apps with features specifically aimed at schools. In time for the new year, Google Classroom is getting a bunch of new features, like annotations and email summaries for parents. Additionally, Expeditions has more virtual field trips and Forms finally supports adding images.
Google Chrome is constantly changing, sometimes for the good, other times for the bad. Some changes are small, others large, but even the smallest, seemingly meaningless change can make a big difference in how we use the browser. That was the case recently when Google disabled the shortcut to go back in Chrome by pressing the backspace key.
Following the fifth and final N Developer Preview, Android 7.0 is scheduled for release to AOSP and the ecosystem for OEMs to start working on updating existing phones. LG has just announced a Preview Program for G5 owners in South Korea to try Nougat now.
With Duo going live this morning and the release of Allo right around the corner, the future seems unclear for the future of Google Hangouts. As great as the service can be, Allo and Duo duplicate its functionality and even add on to it with more features. Until now Google hasn’t said much regarding the service’s future except that Allo and Duo wouldn’t be replacing it. Today we’ve learned more about Google’s plan for the service through Google’s VP of communication products, Nick Fox.
Along with Allo, Duo is Google’s latest take on consumer messaging after many attempts. Solely focussed on video chatting, the service and the accompanying Android and iOS mobile apps will be available later today.
Over the past several months we’ve been seeing Google moving various services away from Google+. The app no longer comes pre-loaded on Android devices, you no longer need a Google+ account for YouTube or Google Play, and now the company is cutting another chunk out of the social network, Hangouts on Air.
Launched in 2014 and frequently updated with new features, Inbox by Gmail is Google’s smarter take on email. As of last year, all personal Google Accounts gained access to the app. Starting today, Inbox is now available by default for Education and Non-profit domains.
Google seems to be on a major push to increase take-up of its Google Photos service. A little over a week ago, it ran a video ad focused on how useful it is to be able to recover space on your phone by removing photos already stored on Google. It’s now running a new ad on the value of automatic backups.
The ad shows someone jumping into a pool, and realizing while he’s in mid-air that his phone is still in the pocket of his shorts. The voiceover says that, sure, you can get a new phone, but what about the photos on the soaked one? ‘What will you do?’ the narrator asks … ?
One minor inconvenience that plagues Android Pay is that with the wide variety of Android phones comes many different locations for the NFC chip — and thereby some frustrating experiences if you can’t find it. On one device it might be located at the top, another in the center, and another at the bottom. As the Android Pay app continues to show users more about how to use the service, it seems that an upcoming update might help users actually find that NFC chip…
After adding new features over the past several months, it appears that Google is testing yet another new option for Google Now. This new tab, labeled “Dashboard”, will apparently be used to pull information from other Google services such as Keep, Gmail, Google Photos, and others to bring all of that information into one central location.
Rolled out earlier this year on the web, Gmail for Android will now warn users when they receive a message from an unauthenticated sender. Today’s other security update extends Safe Browsing protections to links from phishing and malware sites found in emails.
In May, Google circulated a draft proposal to effectively kill Adobe Flash by blocking the plugin and prioritizing HTML5 by the end of the year. The company is going ahead with that plan to “de-emphasize” Flash with a staged disabling of the plug-in through multiple versions of Chrome.
Following an update a couple of weeks ago, Google has today announced another update to Google Maps for Android that brings along some useful new features. These new features are aimed at those who are looking to save a bit of data on their mobile plans or who may live in areas where mobile data isn’t available.
Yesterday’s Pokemon Go update brought news of a new “Nearby” tracker in testing with a “subset of users.” The removal of the original feature upset many players who consider location tracking to be a key element of the game. Some users have began to receive the new Nearby A/B test and screenshots show the feature to be vastly improved.
Version 0.33.0 of Pokémon Go is rolling out on Android and brings a few minor features and fixes to the hit game. Most notably, users now have the ability to change their username once and a bug that prevented bonus XP from throws has been resolved.
Chrome 52‘s rollout to all platforms is near complete, bringing Material Design to the Mac and a number of features for Chrome OS. Version 53 is now in the beta channel with a number of user facing features specifically for Android.
After releasing major updates to its apps on both Android and iOS back in May, eBay has just updated its apps yet again to introduce even more useful features. For Android users, this latest update brings along support for eBay’s new “One-Time Password” login method and also a full Android Wear application…
There are a lot of great aspects of Chrome OS, however one of its worst “features” is the lockscreen. While it certainly does a great job keeping your Chromebook secure, entering in your full password gets very tedious over time, especially if you have a long password.
Following improvements to Google Maps that surface interesting locales, Google Search is now showing restaurant reviews from top critics and what best-of lists (from various publishers on the web) a place has been mentioned in. In related updates, the latest Google app beta now shows weather and stock cards when triggering Now on Tap from the homescreen.
If you’re one of those people concerned that you may end up in a ditch with a broken leg while running or cycling, Strava has a new peace-of-mind feature for you. Known as Beacon, it effectively offers Glympse type functionality to allow family or friends to track your location as you exercise.