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Dropbox fans, you’re in luck – version 3.0.0 is completely redesigned to follow Google’s Material Design guidelines.
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Avid Foursquare junkies (myself included), rejoice – mayorships are back, just now in the Swarm app. You can become the mayor of a place by checking into it more than anyone else in the last 30 days, and only one check-in per day counts towards your rank.
Update: What’s that? Oh, just the smell of change. After initially standing firm on its implementation of the hotwording module and proprietary Google extension being automatically downloaded in new installations of the Chromium open source browser, a wave of criticism has led to the team pulling it out of Chromium 45 and onwards. The module that manages whether the hotword listening extension is enabled will be “disabled by default” and the proprietary technology that actually listens for “Ok Google” will not download. A member of the team says simply:
In light of this issue, we have decided to remove the hotwording component entirely from Chromium. As it is not open source, it does not belong in the open source browser.
The original story continues below.
It all started with a blinking LED light. Ofer Zelig wrote on his blog today about an odd case where the LED light on his computer, that turns on whenever the microphone or camera is activated, seemed to blink every few seconds or so while he was working on his PC. He investigated in the Windows Task Manager to look for any process that might be to blame – no dice. He shut down some suspicious processes that might have been causing it and says he didn’t have any malware installed, but still to no avail. Turns out, the culprit was none other than Google’s Chrome browser…
As reported by users on Twitter, Google has updated its cached link toolbar with new ways to view website snapshots. Cached webpages can now be viewed in their full glory with all styling intact, in a text-only version that strips all styling, or viewed by their source, meaning you can view the code behind the cached webpage.
Here’s what visiting the text-only cached version of Google.com looks like:
The company every so often will take a snapshot of a website and save it to its cache, so the page can still be viewable in the event that the website its hosted on becomes inaccessible. You can access the cached version of a webpage, like the one above, by searching for it on Google, clicking on the green down arrow directly to the right of a result URL, and clicking “Cached.” Click here to see the cached page for Google.com.
Google only ever makes its Android developer preview versions available on its own Nexus devices – these devices are designed partly with developer modification and testing in mind, after all. But Sony has gone ahead and done the necessary legwork to make the preview version of Android M work on those of its devices in its Open Device program, and even has a handy guide on how to install it.
Ensuring a device can run the M Developer preview without too many issues, device manufacturers have to include in the software support (drivers) for all the hardware – the chipset, connectivity radios, etc. Over on Sony’s Open Device page is a list of devices in the program along with two downloads to get M running, the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) – Android M itself – as well as software to get the hardware working properly on M. Only a couple of its smartphones and tablets are currently supported right now.
Google has this morning announced a new effort called News Lab, which is the company’s attempt at using its many resources and technologies to help usher in a new age of innovation in journalism. There are three basic tentpoles to what the company is doing here to empower journalists: tools, data, and programs.
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Google’s Nexus Player may not be a substitute for a full-on games console, but if you want something which combines the casting capabilities of the cheaper Chromecast stick with some casual gaming capabilities, you can now pick one up for 35% off.
The official Asus store on Amazon is currently offering the device for $64.78, a saving of a little over $35.
The Nexus Player was the first device to get Android 5.1.1 back in April.
The 3rd generation Moto G (2015) is likely to be just around the corner, along with the much-rumored 3rd generation Moto X (2015). And while we got what is probably a nice peek at the upcoming Moto X thanks to Upleaks last weekend, this weekend a couple of other sources are sharing some information about the lower-end budget phone from the Lenovo-owned company. Sadly, at least based on this information, the Moto G (2015) seems to be a bit of a snooze fest…
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California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has released brief factual details of six accidents involving Google and Delphi self-driving cars, after the Associated Press successfully argued that legitimate public interest in the safety of the cars outweighed normal confidentiality rules. Self-driving cars were not found to be at fault in any of the accidents, and there were no injuries.
According to the reports, most of the cars were in self-driving mode when the accidents happened, and the other driver caused the accident. None of the crashes were serious enough to injure the person the state requires to sit behind the wheel, and the reports say none of the people in the other cars were treated for injuries either.
Five of the six accidents involved Google cars, and four of those were with the car in self-driving mode. The DMV was unaware of eight other accidents involving Google autonomous cars until the company shared the information during a conference call in April …
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Google controls most of the search engine market in Europe, and as a result receives most ‘right to be forgotten’ requests, those things where individuals can request the de-listing of links to sensitive information about themselves that are deemed out-dated or irrelevant. But more than half of requests are denied, and of those that are appealed, most of those are too denied – which the European Union says is just fine.
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Burner, the popular app for creating throwaway phone numbers that can be used for making calls and sending text messages, has received a large update to its Android app today. The new app has three key additions, so let’s go through them.
The first major change you’ll notice upon updating the app is that it’s been completely redesigned. FABs (floating action buttons), new colors, transitions – the app now adheres to Google’s Material Design guidelines. You can see what the new app looks like above, but here’s a taste of what the app looked like before today’s update:
The next big change is the addition of unified inboxes. These will come in handy for Burner users who have more than one number in the app, placing all messages and missed calls into one inbox with color-coding so as you scroll through all your calls and messages or start replying to one, you’ll know which Burner number the message came through.
Finally, there’s now also an Android Wear app. But don’t worry, there’s no keyboard access – the app allows you to view notifications and messages, and reply using voice commands.
The company behind the app says that this update was built upon the feedback they’ve received from users, and that this is just the beginning of “a ton of new features that will be coming to Android.”
Have you come across the Easter egg in Google Chrome that alleviates the frustration of your Internet going down with a fun side-scrolling game? You’re a dinosaur running and your objective is to jump and avoid hitting obstacles like rocks, ditches, and cacti, getting the highest score you can in order show off and brag to your friends (or earn their pity on you). Recently, that game has become a bit more difficult with the introduction of a new obstacle — a dinosaur that can fly.
Chrome evangelist François Beaufort posted to his Google+ account yesterday to show off what the new dinosaur, a pterodactyl, looks like in action in the game, saying it was added in a recent update to Chromium. You won’t face off against the dinosaur until your score nears 500 and, to be honest, I was having trouble reaching that score so I just used the image he shared, pictured above.
If you haven’t seen this Easter egg in Chrome before, next time you try and load a website in Chrome and get the “Unable to connect to the Internet” page, click on the dinosaur and then press either the <Up> or <Left> key on your keyboard and the game will begin. Or you can just disable the Internet connection on your computer and try to refresh a page.
Few of us actively like ads, but most of us are smart enough to recognize that if we want free content, advertising is what pays the bills for the people providing it. But publishers face a growing threat from increasingly sophisticated ad-blockers that deprive them of revenue needed to remain in business. Even mobile networks and Apple are getting in on the action.
One former Google exec thinks he has the answer. Ben Barokas, former general manager of marketplace development at the search giant, is working on a new type of adblock-blocker that he thinks may not just help publishers, but also provide their readers with more choices …
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The month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan runs from this evening, June 17th, and ends in the evening of July 17th, and Google has launched a website that takes advantage of the company’s vast offerings to provide a helpful dashboard through which to get the most out of the month.
Another day, another expanded soak test of a Motorola software upgrade. This time, Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for the 1st and 2nd-generation Moto X in a bevy of countries.
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A couple new hardware items have just hit Google’s online store – the just-announced Nest Protect (2nd gen) and Nest Cam, and Razer’s Forge TV.
Google has today pushed an update to its Trends product, which it says is the biggest expansion to the search analysis product since 2012. The goal with this update, the company says, is to provide a “faster, deeper and more comprehensive view of our world” through real-time data on everything from the FIFA scandal to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign kick-off.
Update: Google has uploaded a video to its Android YouTube account, embedded at the bottom of this post, to formally announce the campaign, which it’s calling “And Proud,” with lots of people on Twitter using the #andproud hashtag to share their Android.
Androidify, the cutesy undercover app part of Google’s “Be together, not the same” campaign, has received a small update today — but only in terms of its download size. The update brings a lot of LGBT pride focused clothing and moves that you can add to your custom Android character. The update seems to align well with the annual San Francisco Pride Parade, held on June 28th, at which Google employees make a regular appearance. And if you create a Pride-themed character and share it to the Androidify.com website by June 27th, your character will be a part of Google’s “global online Pride parade,” being held on the same day.
Google is well known for its efforts to support diversity both inside and outside of the company through initiatives like covering the health benefits of LGBT couples and Made with Code, a program to get more young girls learning how to code. You can get the update via APKMirror right now, but if you aren’t quite familiar with manually updating and installing apps, the update to version 4.0 (from 3.0) should be rolling out via the Play Store to your device at some point over the next 24 hours.
Google traditionally participates in LGBT Pride month in a variety of ways, with one of the most notable being its redesigned search results page for several LGBT queries.
Transportation service Uber has hired a longtime mapping expert from Google as the company focuses on boosting its own mapping expertise. As Recode reports, Brian McClendon has left his engineering VP role at Google to oversee Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center. McClendon previously led development for Google Earth and Google Maps and has worked for the company for 10+ years…
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Speaking in an interview with CNBC, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabe Weinberg said that the company’s traffic has grown 600 percent over the past two years. A variety of factors likely played a role in this explosion of growth, but it is mainly attributable to the NSA’s surveillance program, which was revealed two years ago. It has been reported in the past that the NSA tapped into Google servers and accessed the data of millions of users.