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Image: Alix Tichelman (Source: USA Today)

The Associated Press reports that the Santa Cruz Police Department has arrested Alix Catherine Tichelman, reportedly a well-known prostitute from Georgia, on suspicions of second-degree murder in the death of 51-year-old Forrest Timothy Hayes. Tichelman is accused of injecting heroin into Hayes while on his yacht, and then fleeing the scene when he overdosed on the drug. 
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At I/O last month, Google announced that Android users would soon have the ability to mirror their device’s screen to their TV via a Chromecast. Today, thanks to an update to the Chromecast app, the feature is finally live. In a post on the official Android Blog, Google explained that the feature is still in beta and warned users not to be alarmed if it didn’t work properly 100% of the time.

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Google X director and former head of Google Glass Babak Parviz said at the Wearable Technologies Conference that the company’s product is “one answer” but “not necessarily the definitive answer,” reports CNET.

Parviz, who last month stepped aside from leading the Glass team in favor of the more fashion-focused Ivy Ross, described the product as a first step in the right direction.

This is a nice first step to where we want to go. We can see glimmers of how this might work out …

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If you’ve been frustrated by the fact that you can’t install paid apps on your Android Wear devices, your frustration should soon be at an end. Google has just notified developers of a workaround to the problem, which was caused by a bug in the anti-piracy measures employed with paid apps … 
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Google has officially introduced Linux support for Chrome Remote Desktop and provided step-by-step instructions to setup the beta through its Help Center. Linux already supported remote assistance login via PIN passwords, but now it gains long-awaited full remote desktop capabilities. Chrome Remote Desktop is also available for Windows, OS X, Chrome OS, Android and iOS devices. 
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As more and more Android Wear devices start to trickle out to the public, a somewhat major bug has been discovered by the folks at Android Police. According to users of the G Watch and Gear Live, there is currently no way to install paid apps onto the devices. Normally, Android Wear apps are installed to the watch from the user’s phone, via Bluetooth. Apps that cost money, however, are not installing on Android Wear devices.

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Like it does at the beginning of every month, Google this afternoon updated its Android distribution numbers to reflect a 7 day period ending today, July 7th. The most recent version of Android, 4.4 KitKat, saw a modest increase from 13.6 percent to 17.9 percent. Jelly Bean, for the first time ever, saw a decline as a whole in usage by 1.9 percent.

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Google this afternoon started rolling out an update to its Play Music app on iOS with a handful of new features. The update bumps the app to version 1.3.0.2190. Firstly, the update finally adds support for gapless playback, which means that there is no pause between the end of one song and the beginning of another. The update also adds the ability to download subscribed playlists in one tap, allowing you to listen to them without a data connection.

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Google may be keeping an eye on your summer vacation plans, however if your net worth doesn’t allot room for excursions like Caribbean cruises, Mountain View has something to help keep your recently released kids’ creative juices flowing. The search giant has partnered with MAKE to announce this year’s Maker Camp, a free online summer camp for teenagers powered by Google+. Starting today, campers from around the world can join each other for daily projects like soda bottle rocket fireworks, glowing bikes and LED shoe clips.

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdnp_7atZ0M]

In a ‘fireside chat’ with leading venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin talked about the moment they thought they’d sold the company to him for $1.6M.

There were four of us at the time – four grad students at Stanford. I remember, we fired off this note to Vinod. It was just a little e-mail that said, “We really don’t want to sell, but for $1.6 million, you got a deal.” And a few minutes later, we got a reply that said, “That’s a lot of dough, but ok we’ll do it.” That’s characteristic Vinod there. So then, ten minutes later, Scott – one of the four of us – comes running in, laughing. Huge grin on his face. He had faked the reply and back then, the ethics around faking emails weren’t quite the same. Anyway, so he had that big joke. The deal obviously never came to fruition, and we went our own way to build search …

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A Re/code piece on Google’s Shopping Express service says that the company is investing $500M to expand the service beyond San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City and roll it out nationally.

The service lets shoppers buy things from local retail stores through Google, which then delivers them to consumers from the physical retail store on the same or next day.

A source familiar with the company’s plans says senior Google execs have set aside as much as $500 million to expand the service nationwide …

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Last month, Apple quietly unveiled a new feature in iOS 8 that automatically scrambles an iOS device’s MAC address when it is searching for Wi-Fi networks. It made this move as a security precaution, as some marketing and analytics companies use the unique identifier to collect users’ location history to help clients “improve store layouts, determine timing for promotions and sales, measure the effects of advertising, and set staffing levels and store hours.”

If you have an Android smartphone, however, the Electronic Frontier Foundation claims there remains a high risk that your device is broadcasting your location history to anyone within Wi-Fi range of you. “Wi-Fi devices that are not actively connected to a network can send out messages that contain the names of networks they’ve joined in the past in an effort to speed up the connection process,” the EFF writes.

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Well-known figures taking advantage of Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten‘ ruling, in which Google and other search engines are required to remove links to sensitive information deemed ‘out-dated or irrelevant’, are not quite getting the results they hoped for. Google is choosing to notify the media when links to stories are removed, and the British media is responding by running stories on the censorship – putting the subjects of the removed links back in the news once more … 
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Google tonight made a pair of enhancements to the Play Store for the lucky people with an Android Wear device. First off, the company has released the official Android Wear companion app for Android. This app connects with your Android Wear device (i.e. the Gear Live or G Watch) and allows you to control voice action preferences, adjust notification settings, and configure various other settings for your watch.

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Image via Reuters

Update: The WSJ reports that Google agreed to block access to the email, and advised that it had not been read

According to a new report from Reuters, investment banking firm Goldman Sachs is taking legal action against Google over an email that it accidentally sent to the wrong address. The report claims that a Goldman Sachs employee was sending an email, but instead of putting the correct @gs.com ending, the employee put @gmail.com, which in turn caused the email to be sent to a total stranger.

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Google today announced that a major update to Play Services is now rolled out, bumping it from version 4.4 to 5.0. Many of the details in this update were announced at Google I/O last week, but the company also broke everything down in blog post today, as well. The update began rolling out after I/O, but now is entirely rolled out to devices world-wide.

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Back at Google I/O, Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects team showed off the first booting prototype Project Ara device and teased that the first units would be available to developers later this year. Today, Google announced that 100 members of its Ara Scouts program will soon be the recipients of the first Project Ara devices. In a post announcing the closure of the Ara Scouts program, Google said that the lucky 100 people were chosen based on how often they participated in the Scouts program.

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Google today appears to be rolling out much wider support for its “Ok Google” command within Search. This update pertains solely to the ability to say “Ok Google” within Google Now and the search box to activate a command or search and have Google automatically detect when you say it. Previously, this feature was supported only in the US, Canada, France, and Germany. Today’s update adds support for 7 new language locales, including Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese. Google’s been testing these languages in these regions for a little while now, so it’s possible that you could have been one of the lucky testers.

• English (now supports all accents / dialects)
• Spanish (Spain and Mexico only)
• Italian
• Portuguese (Brazilian only)
• Russian
• Korean
• Japanese

The update appears to be rolling out gradually, so it may take a little while to hit your device. You also need to be on the most recent version of the Google Search

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