Over the past day or so we’ve seen a number of reports across the web claiming that Google’s Photos app is uploading photos even after it’s been uninstalled. Of course the worry is that customers could be racking up huge cellular data overages from having it “switched on without them knowing it”. The truth is, having the Photos app installed or uninstalled makes no difference to whether or not your snaps are being uploaded to Google’s drive in the sky.
Google today announced it’s adding a handy new feature to its Google Flight Search tool that allows users to find and book flights. Now, when viewing a flight on Google Flight Search on the web or your mobile device, you’ll be able to hit a small star icon that will save your flight to a “Save Flights” section. The tool will be nice for times when you don’t want to immediately book a flight but might want to view or book it at a later time. Saving the flight will make sure you can easily do so from a new Saved Flights section on any device:
When I’m signed in to my Google account on my mobile phone or tablet, and find a flight option I’m interested in I click the star button to add it to my saved flights list… I can then access my saved flights on any device at any time by clicking the star icon on the Flight Search home page.
Your saved results won’t be static either. That means when returning Google will make sure your save flights have up to date pricing and any changes that might have occurred to the flight itinerary. You’ll notice the new save button in Flight Search on both the desktop and mobile starting today. Expand Expanding Close
Dropbox kicked off its developer conference in San Francisco today and with it came a few updates including new tools for devs and the announcement that the service now has 175 million users. That’s up about 75 million users from just last November.
The developer conference also included some announcements about new tools coming to let third-party app and website developers easier integrate Dropbox. The company is introducing a platform for developers that includes a new API called Datastores, allowing app devs to store and sync data from their apps across multiple devices and platforms. It’s something developers have been doing on their own for a while (for example 1Password), but now Dropbox is making easy for all:
The Datastore API provides developers a new way to sync data beyond files across a variety of devices and platforms. The Datastore API allows developers to save their app’s structured data (e.g. contacts, to-do items, and game state) on Dropbox and handles all the magic necessary to sync it quickly and reliably. Users of a Datastore-enabled app can be sure their data will be up-to-date across all their devices whether online or offline.
It also showed off new “Drop-ins” that will let devs easily integrate the ability to open and save from Dropbox within their apps: Expand Expanding Close
If you are having issues with Google Drive, you aren’t alone. We’ve just lost our access to our online documents though our local sync seems to be working fine. Google’s Apps status page just went code orange indicating they are investigating the issue. Now let’s start talking about how safe your documents are in the Cloud.
Following releasing the features to Beta channel users, Google announced today that it has started rolling out an update (26.0.1410.58) to all Chrome for Android users. It includes the ability to access saved password and autofill entries.
Users logged into both Chrome on the desktop and Android will now be able to get access to saved autofill entries and passwords when using the Android app:
To try it out, make sure you’re signed in to Chrome on both your desktop and mobile device, and let sync take care of the rest.
Password Sync
Autofill Sync
Fixed issue where blank page would be loaded rather than URL
Performance and stability improvements
The updated Chrome app should be available through Google Play soon, but Google noted it could take a couple of days for the feature to roll out to everybody.
This morning’s Stable release of Chrome will soon allow access to open tabs across multiple devices in different locations.
The feature has been available in Chrome Beta since early April. It enabled users logged into Chrome to open browser tabs on one device while permitting access to them on separate devices from within the “Other devices” menu on the New Tab page.
“Say you’ve found an awesome recipe on your work computer while… ahem… working hard at the office. But when you get back home, you can’t quite remember if it was two teaspoons of baking soda or two teaspoons of baking powder,” wrote Software Engineers Raz Mathias on the official Google Chrome Blog while detailing the latest feature. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could pull up the same recipe on your home computer with one click?”
