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Autoawesome fans take note as Google staff software engineer Erik Murphy-Chutorian just dropped word on Google+ that two new features are rolling out for the holidays.

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Google is rolling out support to its take out service for exporting email and appointment data from its Gmail and Google Calendar services, the company announced today.

While Google often supports data exporting when sunsetting a service, the company says in this instance it’s simply allowing users the ability to better archive personal data and switch to other services with less friction.
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Update: Whoa, that was fast as a Google+ post courtesy of the Nexus team just announced Android 4.4.1 is rolling out right now to Nexus 5 devices.

With a brief look at our analytics earlier this week, we discovered the existence of Android 4.4.1 in the wild. As it turns out, Android 4.4.1 is closer than we think as a new Verge report shows how Google is using this software update to attack the Nexus 5 camera’s shortcomings. According to Dave Burke, Google’s Director of Engineering for Android, 4.4.1 will begin rolling out over the next few days in the hopes of fixing the “buggy and inconsistent” camera that is the Nexus 5.

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Back in October, Google announced the first hardware revision of its Glass product and that it would be available to current Explorers this year. Tonight, our own Seth Weintraub received his invitation to reserve the new revision of Glass for himself. Users who receive the invitation have until February 5th to make their decision on whether to upgrade or not. Should you choose to upgrade, you must fill out the form from Google and choose what color you would like the unit to be. The process is on a first-come, first-serve basis, so don’t wait too long to make your decision.

Once the updated unit is available, Google will send you a return box and return label for your original pair of Glass. After you send it back, your new and improved unit should arrive within a 3-5 days. It’s unclear when exactly Google will begin sending out the return boxes to Explorers.

As far as what’s new with this hardware revision of Glass, Google says that these units are made to support upcoming prescription lenses, and also include a new mono earbud.

Glass users who purchased Glass before October 28, 2013 are eligible to upgrade their units, so be on the lookout for an email to hit your inbox soon. Read the full invitation after the break..
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Google announced today that it has added yet another new category to its ever-expanding Knowledge Graph service. Starting today, users can search the make, model, and year of a car to find out a variety of information, directly from the Google search page.

For instance, if you search “Tesla Model S”, the Knowledge Graph will now show up and present you with the MSRP, horsepower, miles-per-gallon, make, and available trims. Different cars show a different set information, as well. Should you search “Ford Focus”, you will be presented with the MSRP, MPG, and horsepower, as well as the engine size, body styles, and other years. Google doesn’t appear to have a whole lot of information in its database at this point. For example, it only has data for the 2012, 2013, and 2014 Ford Focus models.

To try it out for yourself, simply use voice search and say the make and model of a car, or type it into a Google search, just like you would any other search.

Google just announced a major update to Google Search for Android that is going to make finding information a whole lot easier. In simple terms, Google had added app listings to search results which allows your apps to show up in search results, as well as results from Google Play.

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Google has updated its Google Wallet application for the iPhone with a few notable enhancements. First, like it has added to its other apps on iOS as of late, Google now allows single sign-on for Wallet. This means that if you are signed in via Google to YouTube, Gmail, Adsense, or other compatible Google apps, you can be automatically logged in to the Wallet app. More interestingly, you can now use your iPhone’s camera to capture the data from your debit card or credit card to connect it to the app. Google added that feature to the Android app last month. Google Wallet recently launched a physical card program for Wallet. The update is free in the App Store.

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Ho ho ho boys and girls, Santa needs your help and Google is coming to the rescue. Santa has spent the last 11 months soaking up some rays in the tropics but now he’s back at the North Pole with his team of elves making some toys.

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Chrome OS users take note, a brand new camera app is on its way offering a host of new features. The announcement came via Google’s “Happiness Evangelist” Francois Beaufort who suggested that while the current Chrome OS camera is good, the team can do better.

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We’ve been hearing rumors of a subscription music service from YouTube for awhile now, but according to a new report from AllThingsD, we are still a little ways off from seeing it launch. The blog reports, citing “people familiar with the company’s plans”, that the music service will not launch this year, but rather sometime in Q1 2014. Reportedly, YouTube has already secured the licenses with music labels, which is not an easy task nowadays, but is not satisfied with the actual service. Reports of the subscription service began appearing back in October, with the project supposedly nearing its final stages then.

There are still a lot of questions surrounding the service, as well. Such as, how it will differentiate itself from Google’s All Access service and how it handle user content, like lip syncs and mashups. Last week, an update to the YouTube for Android app revealed code that hinted at a “Music Pass” service that supported offline playback and was entirely ad free for “millions of songs”.

Since there’s no pinpoint launch date within Q1, it could be that we see the service launch relatively early in the quarter, which would mean we are not too far away from seeing it.

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Google’s quest to take over the world continues as the search engine giant announces (via Reuters) lower prices on their cloud services as it ramps up to take on Amazon’s AWS own cloud service.

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While the majority of Android users might still be a version or two behind despite some impressive upgrade numbers for KitKat, Google appears to be prepping the first update to KitKat with Android 4.4.1. A look at our analytics shows hits from a number of devices running 4.4.1 originating from Google’s home turf in Santa Clara, California. Above we can see a huge increase in hits from 4.4.1 devices over the last week.

Among the devices are both phones and tablets including the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and Nexus 7:
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As Google releases its newest platform version numbers for December we’re giving a warm welcome to Android 4.4 KitKat and its first appearance. Arriving on the board at 1.1%, it’s an impressive feat for Android’s newest software considering it’s still only on a handful of the devices it’s actually available for outside of the Nexus 5. When Ice Cream Sandwich debuted back in December of 2011, it was only at 0.6% at the end of January. Jelly Bean saw a similar result as it released in August of 2012 and made its debut at 0.8%.

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Oh the weather outside is…not yet frightful but the deals have already started and the holiday season is moving into full swing. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday now behind us, it begs the question what goodies you purchased over this holiday weekend? Did you grab a new tablet, smartphone, Chromebook, HTC One, LG G2, Galaxy S 4 or something else entirely?

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Google has now added the Play Music app to the MyGlass page, allowing Glass users to use voice controls to play music through the device. The announcement was made by Google engineer Stephen Lau on Google+.

The Play Music APK was first spotted in the Glass XE11 update last month, and users were able to side load the app, but it was not officially listed by Google at the time. Now it is. As we explained then:

Once the app is loaded, simply say “OK Glass, listen to,” then the name of a song, artist, album, or playlist. A card will then pop up with results and allow you to specify what to play. A new card also stays pinned for further music control, including Play, Stop, Skip, Rewind, and volume control … 
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU]

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shocked Charlie Rose on Cyber Monday Eve (great timing for the PR-savvy retail giant) by showing him the future of delivery services – autonomous drones that will pick up and deliver wares from fulfillment centers. From which we can conclude that Charlie Rose doesn’t read 9to5Google, where the concept is old news.

We mentioned way back in February that Google was already working on drone delivery services:

Along with Glass, Google will have an opportunity to demonstrate other upcoming and Google X projects like driverless cars and mini-drone delivery systems at its stores.

We reference it again when the company launched the trial of its ‘Google Shopping Express’ same-day delivery service to Bay Area residents:

Google, in the long run, plans to use self-driving cars and flying drones as means of delivery.

And again:

9to5Google also heard this service was coming, and we have some more somewhat wild information on the program. Google, in the long run, plans to use self-driving cars and flying drones as means of delivery. We also heard Google’s delivery project came from the Google X incubator headed by cofounder Sergey Brin.

Clearly there are a lot of hurdles to jump on the way to this vision (privacy, theft, accidents, visual pollution, etc, etc). but it’s equally clear that these two Silicon Valley heavy-weights are prepping to battle in the skies above.

Google might have gotten there first, but Amazon definitely wins the PR battle so far: a short concept video for a service which doesn’t yet exist, and which even optimistically it doesn’t expect to launch for a couple of years, got everyone talking about them. Including Charlie Rose. Video below …

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If you’ve been looking for a good book these days, Google just made selecting your next novel a little easier with a special Google Books sale. The Cyber Monday deal is good on over 100 bestselling books, with discounts up to 75% off the cover price.

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We’ve already had a glimpse at Google’s Cyber Weekend extravaganza with deals on games, books, music, gadgets, magazines and TV series. However, even with our Cyber Weekend announce post earlier today, a new post with a broken down list of ALL the deals Google is hosting over the weekend was in order. Below you’ll find a list of all the hardware, software, subscription, music and game deals you will find from Goog this weekend. Credit goes to The Verge for compiling the full list but hit the Google Play link below to get your shopping groove on.

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