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Billed as ‘the lockscreen that learns,’ Cover is an Andoid app that notes which apps you use in which locations, and then puts the apps you’re most likely to need onto your lockscreen.

At home you might get weather, news, traffic and Twitter; at work, calendar, Google drive and LinkedIn; in the car, maps and music … 
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Rumors that Samsung plans to launch a Google Glass competitor have been lent further credence by a design patent uncovered by the WSJ.

While it’s not the first glasses patent Samsung has filed – this one was granted back in March – the latest one does look much closer to something that might actually be launched than the previous design … 
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Update: Google did it

After-hours trading saw Google’s stock price jump 8 percent to $959.65 as investors responded to its 23 percent revenue gain in its Q3 results. This potentially puts the stock in sight of the exclusive $1000 per share club, reports the Telegraph … 
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Following a report back in July showing that Google+ gets only 2 percent of social sharing, new figures from Shareaholic (via Marketing Land) reveal that the service drives an average of 0.06 percent of all referral traffic. This contrasts with Facebook at 8.11 percent, Pinterest at 3.24 and Twitter at a surprisingly low 1.17.

Google+ traffic is also growing at a far slower rate than other social media.

Shareaholic also says that Google+ is growing the slowest as a referral source at just 6.97 percent over the past year. Referrals from Facebook (58.81 percent), Pinterest (66.52 percent), Twitter (54.12 percent) and YouTube (52.86 percent) all grew more than 50 percent since September 2012.

Viewed against a backdrop of Google’s aggressive promotion of the service, making it virtually impossible not to have a G+ account by linking it to every product the company has, it does make me question whether Google+ has a long-term future … 
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Over the past few weeks, everyone has been heavily focused on the forthcoming KitKat update and Nexus 5, but Android Police has obtained screenshots of something that should be rolling out to everyone soon. According to the site, Google is currently in the process of redesigning the Play Store, yet again. The changes will keep up with what Google has been doing to its other apps.

The biggest user-interface change comes with the new slide-out navigation panel, which is commonly referred to as “hamburger-style” navigation. In the current version of the Play Store, all of the options are put into a single menu in the upper right corner. With this Play Store update, the menu options will be reduced to just settings and help, while everything will move to the navigation panel.

• Store home
• My apps, My movies & TV, etc., (varies depending on what section of the Play Store you are in)
• Shop (only appears at certain times)
• My wishlist
• Redeem

As far as release timeframe goes, Android Police expects the update to go live with Android 4.4 at the very minimum, but notes that it may go out earlier. It will compatible with all versions of Android back to Froyo. The blog also notes that the design is a work in progress and may very well change several times before release. 
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We first brought you the story of a 30-year-old man finding his lost mother and family using Google Earth earlier this year, and Google has posted an emotional video on YouTube of Saroo Brierley telling his story of technology leading to his reunion.

Brierly was disconnected from his family at the age of five in a turn of tragedy, and decades later saw Google Earth as an avenue to search the streets he recollected in fragments for answers of his origin. Check out the compelling video below:
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Image: digitallifeplus.com

Google has confirmed it’s working on a Mobile Meter app for both Android and iOS to allow it to monitor how smartphone owners use mobile apps. But no need for any privacy panicking: the app will be available only to those who have opted in to Google’s Screenwise paid market research panel, reports Engadget.

The Mobile Meter apps will replace an older method that allowed panelists to participate, helping Google measure media consumption across all screens but with more accurate results on mobile. Both the Android and iOS apps will be submitted to their relevant app stores in the near future, although only panelists will be able to actually use them … 
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I recently heard word that Google was putting the finishing touches on a Watch product. Details are slim but the person seemed to think that Google Now functionality would be at the center of the product.

Thinking about this, Google could put a lot of the functionality of Google Glass in the watch product. Push a button, ask a question, get a response as the watch talks to the Now-enabled smartphone.  Also, the ‘serendipitous’ information that Google Now shows you on your phone could come up in the watch. Time to get home, Calendar alarms, emails, SMSes, etc. all could get pushed to the watch’s display

Google is focusing on longer battery life and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. There was no word on the type of sensors and health monitoring functionality that Apple is rumored to be working on.

We’d heard earlier some details from Artem Russakovskii, which I can’t confirm, but considering my info now bears repeating:

Google will announce a Nexus watch, codenamed Gem, likely together with the KitKat announcement. The date I have, which, once again, is about a month old, is also October 31st.

My source also seemed to think “sooner rather than later.”

Google acquired WIMM Labs, an Android based Smartwatch SDK developer last year for an undisclosed sum. The company’s Smartwatch App store is still live here and contains some notable apps including Facebook.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8JqUlQj43M

Foursquare is squarely moving into Google’s territory with the announcement today that it is officially opening up its local ad platform to all of the 1.5 million claimed businesses in the app. That means that no longer will only a select group of partners be able to offer “Promoted” listings within the app– something Foursquare has been testing in recent months– but now all small businesses will have the opportunity to place local ads.

The benefit over, say, Google’s ads platform for local businesses, is the ability for merchants to actually see if their ad leads to a real customer walking into their store:

Today, we’re opening Foursquare Ads to all small businesses around the world. We’re moving past the days when business owners have to figure out if a “like” or a “click” has any meaning in the real world; now they can tell if someone who saw their ad actually walks into their store. We built this to be simple and flexible, learning from our four years of data and relationships with over 1.5 million claimed businesses. Any merchant can monitor how many people have viewed their ad, how many have tapped on it, and how many actually came into their store. Merchants know what they’re paying for – real actions and real customers.

Business owners interested in creating ads on Foursquare can do so at foursquare.com/ads. 
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Google has announced a change to its terms of service that will allow the company to use your name, photo and company endorsements to be included in ads from 11th November (via the NYT).

When the new ad policy goes live Nov. 11, Google will be able to show what the company calls shared endorsements on Google sites and across the Web, on the more than two million sites in Google’s display advertising network, which are viewed by an estimated one billion people.

If a user follows a bakery on Google Plus or gives an album four stars on the Google Play music service, for instance, that person’s name, photo and endorsement could show up in ads for that bakery or album … 
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Just a day after Google announced a new HP-made ARM-powered Chromebook for $279, Acer has upped the ante with a Haswell-powered one for $249.

The Acer C720 offers the same 1366×768 resolution screen as the HP. The Acer screen is anti-glare, which offers easier viewing when used outside at the expense of slightly poorer contrast. The machine has 4GB RAM against the 2GB of the HP, and the Haswell processor gives it a claimed 8.5 hours battery life, against 6 hours for the HP … 
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Two months after the initial launch of the device, Google has just released its official flip cases for the 2013 Nexus 7. The cases are available in four colors: red, white, black, and blue. Google touts that this is the first case “designed by Google specifically for the Nexus 7” and is made to fit the “exact specifications” of your device.

The flip cases feature a built in stand with positions for typing, as well as watching a video/participating in a Hangout. Finally, on the edge of the case is a tiny Google-colored flag to remind you that the case fits perfectly.

The cases run $49.99, which is certainly steep, but they appear to be rather high quality.  Keep in mind, however, that there are plenty of cases on Amazon for under $10 that may be just as sturdy. 
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There have been tons of rumors and leaks about Google’s upcoming Nexus 5 smartphone in recent weeks, and today we get claims of official details on pricing and new battery size options for the device. According to a report from Phonearena citing a tipster, the next-gen Nexus will come in 16GB and 32GB models for $299 and $399.

That compares to the $299 and $349 that the two models of the Nexus 4 debuted for, but Phonearena also claims that this time around Google will include a larger battery in the 32GB model:
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Android Police has screenshots suggesting that both SMS and MMS messaging are being integrated into Google Hangouts, with the standalone Messaging app likely to be dropped from KitKat (Android 4.4) – first on Nexus devices and later on others.

The screenshots claim to be from Hangouts 1.3. It’s just speculation that this will ship with KitKat – it’s possible that it may be released before or after. We have recently seen claimed screenshots of KitKat that include the Messaging app, but that isn’t inconsistent with the idea that it would be dropped from the Nexus first … 
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Size comparison between Nexus 7, iPhone 5s and Galaxy Note 2 and S4

“Is that a Samsung Galaxy Mega in your pocket?”, is how the joke usually starts.  Samsung, never content with having the biggest phone out there, released its crazy ‘Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3‘ contraption with a whopping 6.3″ display on AT&T customers in the US recently and I wanted to see if I could actually get by with it, and it alone, as not only my “Internet Communicator” but also my phone.

I should probably preface this with the fact that I’m a very sparse phone user. I rarely give my number out and even when I get a call, I rarely answer it. When I’m at my desk, I use Google Voice, Hangouts, Skype and iChat for voice communications. When I’m on the road, I’m on a cheap unlimited data plan which affords me 100 minutes of talk time a month. I usually use about half of that IYSWIM.

So with that in mind, how were my few weeks with the Mega?

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