Many of the products and services that Google releases are usually geographically limited to the United States. After an initial rollout in the US last October, YouTube Red is now available in Australia and New Zealand.
In 2013, Google Drive addressed one of the biggest advantages of Microsoft Office: offline access and editing. With this feature enabled, Docs, Slides, and Sheets effectively becomes a native application. An update starting today will allow users to select specific files to store and edit without an internet connection.
Big changes are coming to the community-based music streaming service SoundCloud as the company today introduces a new subscription service for the first time.
The new feature, dubbed SoundCloud Go, will allow users to listen to SoundCloud music both offline and ad-free for $10/month:
Earlier this year, a release of Google’s app for Android hinted at future ability to use voice search and commands without an internet connection. Offline voice commands could be used for a number of functions, and are now already be up and running for some Android users with the latest Google app installed…
The Google app — previously known as “Search” — was updated to version 4.8 last week, and now a new teardown has revealed some interesting new details about some features that might be coming in future versions. Most notably, it looks like offline support for “OK, Google” is likely to be on the way, letting you give your device some voice commands without having a connection to the Internet…
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Skype is rolling out version 5.2 of its Android app today and with it comes the ability to share photos with offline contacts. Previously the app only let users share photos with contacts that were currently online.
Gone are the days when you and your contacts need to be online at the same time for you to share photos using Skype. With this update, you can now send photos to your Skype contacts at a time that’s convenient for you, regardless of your contacts’ online status. When they are back on Skype, photos you shared show up beautifully inline in the chat history, whether or not you’re online – allowing you to easily carry on the conversation.
The update adds other new features as well, including picture in picture view for smartphones and enhancements to chat load times, call quality, and more:
The updated Skype app for Android, version 5.2, is rolling out on Google Play today.
Yesterday we reported that Google-owned YouTube was finally planning to offer a way to watch videos offline, but at the time, very few details of the service were available. AllThingsD has now, however, obtained a copy of an e-mail sent out by YouTube to its content “partners”.
Essentially, you will be able to save YouTube videos to your mobile device using the YouTube app for up to 48 hours. Should your device be offline for more than 48 hours, the videos will be unavailable until you reconnect to a network. The videos will still contain ads and you must use the app to watch them, not YouTube.com or any other platform.
YouTube also notes that this feature will not apply to the TV shows and movies it has available for rental. Also worth noting is that YouTube does not make any mention of music videos being supported. Given its tense relationship with most music labels, I’d be very surprised if music/lyric videos were made available to save offline.
If you are a video producer and do not want want your content being saved offline, you do have the ability to disable the functionality, though it will be enabled by default.
The offline functionality is set to launch in November. Read the full memo after the break.
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Google just announced on the Android Google+ page that Google Docs for Android was updated with a few highly requested features. First off, the app now provides the ability to save documents for offline viewing through a “make it available offline” option and even updates the files automatically when connected to Wi-Fi. Offline documents can also be updated manually from within the new “Offline” section of the app.
Another new improvement included in the update is new features for tablet users including high-resolution versions of documents, the ability to swipe right and left between pages, and a slider at the bottom of docs to jump to a specific page.
The new Google Docs for Android is available from the Market now. You can learn everything you need to know about working with offline Docs here.
Noticed by the guys over at The Handheld Blog (via Android Community), Nokia has been rolling out some pretty significant updates to their HTML5 maps web app for Android (and iOS) accessible at m.maps.nokia.com. This brings the web app a lot closer to the quality maps experience exclusive to the N9 and other Nokia devices.
If you haven’t checked it out recently, you will now notice the ability to download maps over WiFi for offline use, allowing you to bypass the need for a data connection when on the go. The update also brings a few other goodies including public transit routes and directions (which adds to the driving and walking navigation introduced in past updates), local area guides, and new point of interest (POI) landmarks showing local retailers, gas stations, etc.
Strangely enough, offline mode in Gmail is a standalone web app (pictured above) rather than being baked into Gmail directly. Click for larger.
Google announced in a post over at the official Gmail blog that it is bringing offline functionality back to Gmail, Calendar and Docs. The feature had initially been enabled in select Google services via Gears, the company’s proprietary browser extension that was later retired in favor of HTML5. It took longer than expected to re-write the offline functionality in HTML5, though. This was in part because Google had to wait until the World Wide Web Consortium ratified new HTML5 features that allow for local browser storage and other technologies that make it possible for developers to write web apps which sync seamlessly between offline and always-on modes of operation.
Gmail offline will be available today, Google said, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today. In the case of Gmail, offline functionality is enabled via a Chrome Web Store app dubbed Offline Google Mail. As for Calendar and Docs, clicking the gear icon at the top right corner and choosing the Offline mode lets you view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments while offline, as well as view your Google documents and spreadsheets. Offline Docs editing isn’t supported yet, but Google is “working hard to make it a reality”.
The question is, will you care about working offline now that mobile/broadband Internet and wireless hotspots have become ubiquitous? (YES!)
Android users who downloaded the updated Maps application today got a nice surprise. Google Maps for Android now features offline viewing. To enable the new feature, simply navigate to the Labs section of the Maps application and enable the Download Map Area option. After this is enabled, each time you want to download maps for offline viewing you will need to visit a Place page, click the more button, and then select the option to store locally. Maps will then store a 10 mile radius, locally to your device.
Offline viewing is available for Android because of the way it displays the maps. Android uses a vector-based system for displaying map tiles, where the iPhone uses an image based. This means Android can pull maps using about 1/100th of the data the iPhone would. Maybe we’ll see a change to the iPhone’s Google Maps soon.
After Google pulled life support on its free and open source browser extension called Gears, many road warriors were left scratching their head because by doing so Google had also killed the useful offline mode in Google Docs. The company relied on Gears to add features to web apps that were not possible in HTML at the time, like the ability for web apps to cache data and maintain operation without continuous network connectivity. Google has been promising to re-write the offline functionality in HTML5 ever since. While no announcement has been made yet, the Google Operating System blog spotted a black status bar in Google Docs labeled “Offline Docs” and links to switch manually between online and offline modes. This means that the search company is internally testing the feature and will probably make an announcement soon.
