Apps and Updates

We first heard about Google’s “Designed for Families” Play Store program in mid-May, and Google officially announced that it would be adding new family-focused features to the Play Store at Google I/O 2015. Now, a new section labeled as “New Family Fun” is popping up on the Play Store, featuring the friendly star mascot, iconic character categories, and more…
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Yesterday, at WWDC 2015, Apple introduced transit directions to its native Maps application for the first time. It’s a feature that has long been in the works, and it’s still not actually coming to consumer devices until later this year. But those who have access to the iOS 9 beta can try out the feature in select cities, including New York City, San Francisco, and others.

Transit directions aren’t new, though, and you probably know that Google has offered them in its own official Maps app for many years. But since Apple split off from using the Google-powered Maps app with iOS 6, the company has been struggling to match Google’s offerings. Here, we take a look at Google’s transit directions in comparison to Apple’s new offering…
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Apple today announced its self-branded music streaming service, and the Cupertino company also mentioned that—for the first time ever—it is launching an Android app made in-house. While the Beats Music app has remained on the Google Play Store since the Apple acquisition, the fruity company didn’t create it and has barely updated it and mostly ignored its existence. Now, though, Apple is planning to launch an official Android app made for Apple Music to be released later this year—specifically in the “fall”. 
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We told you earlier this week about a new voice assistant called Hound, and if you take SoundHound’s internal demo at face value, the app seems like it’s almost too impressive to be true. That video actually went somewhat viral (despite being recorded with a potato), and we wanted to put Hound through the paces to see if it lives up to the hype. We decided it wouldn’t hurt to put Google Now in the mix too and see how SoundHound’s new app compares to Google’s trusty voice assistant…
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The Internet can be a double-edged sword – a window to the world’s knowledge at one end, and at the other a window to the world’s favorite cat pictures. And since on the web all sites are treated equally (save for the “deep” web, I guess) if we don’t have a strong, lasting motivation to get work done it can prove all too easy to get distracted browsing places that aren’t a valuable use of our time. While that lasting motivation must come from within, there are certain tricks and tools you can try that may just give you the boost you need to power through that next email or essay. The one I’d like to share with you today is an extension for Chrome called Momentum.

Momentum quite simply replaces the default New Tab page of Chrome with a “personal dashboard,” as the developer calls it, like the one you see above. For reference, here’s the New Tab page:
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While Sony has yet to officially announce a second generation SmartBand fitness tracker, it briefly released a companion Android app this evening for the device before quickly taking it down. The app, no longer available in the Play Store, was simply titled SmartBand 2 and gave a handful of features we can expect to find in Sony’s upcoming wearable (via Xperia Blog).

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Android TV is getting a ton of new content today as Google revamps app discovery for the platform making around 600 new apps for the platform discoverable in the Google Play Store. The new update comes alongside Android TV update 5.5.15 that offers better organization for Android TV apps with new sections, categories, and improved navigation, opposed to just the selection of curated app lists that were previously available.

The new apps span across many categories from movies to news apps and games:

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Google today released a new version of the official Google Keyboard to the Play Store, most notably bringing along with it dictionary syncing to Google accounts (Apps for Business accounts excluded, it seems) and the ability to access emoji from physical Bluetooth keyboards.

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Slack, the workplace communication service that has taken the corporate communications space by storm, has released what is says is a “better, faster, and all around Android-ier” Slack app for Android, rewritten from the ground up. The biggest changes to come with this new version are a faster user experience for navigating around the app and the introduction of new user interface elements which follow the Material Design guidelines set forth by Google.

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Tidal is today announcing big updates to the Jay-Z backed streaming music service, including a refreshed Android app design with UI tweaks and Ticketmaster integration alongside new desktop app betas for Mac and Windows. 
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SoundHound’s first app is known as one of the best offerings when it comes to recognizing sounds. You could hum a song and the app could, fairly reliably, tell you which one you were humming. Now, the same company has released a new app, called Hound, which attempts to usurp the Google Now throne with some really impressive voice assistant technology…
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A text-parsing bug is causing Android, iOS and Windows Skype apps to repeatedly crash when they receive a simple text string. On all these devices, chat history is loaded when the app re-opens, causing it to immediately crash again.

The text string is simply the first part of an URL, on its own: http:// … 
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Google announced today that it’s improving transit data in Maps with real-time updates showing a summary of your journey that’s easily accessible.

It also announced that it’s adding 25+ new partners to the 100+ it works with to gather real-time transit data. The new additions bring more transit data to customers in the U.K., Netherlands, Budapest, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.
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Dexcom, the company behind one of the leading continuous glucose monitor solutions for diabetes patients, has announced today that their “Follow” mobile app—which has long been available on iOS—is now available for Android devices. There have been many unofficial solutions available in the past, but now Dexcom’s system is officially supported on Google’s mobile OS…
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In addition to updating its iOS app, Imgur this morning has also unveiled an entirely new version of its Android app. Imgur says that this is its first ever fully native app for Android users and was built completely from scratch. The app features a redesigned card-based gallery that offers large and easily viewable images. Users can navigate throughout the interface by swiping left or right to view more content.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtu7ZOQScrI]

As part of Google I/O week, the company is highlighting a number of Play Store apps that use Material Design in different ways. To do this, Google is launching the Material Design Showcase on the Play Store and issuing Material Design Awards to select apps for the first time.
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