Items tagged with Google-Play
Here’s a great holiday gift idea (wait, are we already doing that?) for the Google Nexus owner in your life: A wireless charger, specifically made for Nexus tablets and smartphones. The device works with Nexus 4, Nexus 5, and Nexus 7 smartphones and tablets, and they’ll start shipping as of November 29th. The small square charger has a magnetic surface that your device snaps onto, and it obviates the need to fiddle with a charging plug. The Nexus Wireless Charger comes with a micro USB cable and costs $49.99 in the Google Play store. Alternately, if fifty bucks seems like a but much to drop on a charger, you can always roll with something a little less expensive, like a Qi wireless...
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The mobile market is growing rapidly and promises to expand globally for years to come, but when it comes to apps, that growth presents the problem of language. If there are billions of mobile customers in essentially every region in the world with a smartphone in their pockets, they’re going to want apps in their own languages. Google is tackling that problem by making its App Translation Service available to all Android developers. “To help developers reach users in other languages, we launched the App Translation Service, which allows developers to purchase professional app translations through the Google Play Developer Console,” reads a blog post penned by Google Play’s...
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GoGo, known for its in-flight Internet connectivity service, is expanding its reach from WiFi access to texts and phone calls. Users will ostensibly be able to send text messages and receive phone calls at 30,000 feet using their own smartphones and an app found in the App Store or Google Play store. On the one hand, this is huge news for flyers who want to stay in touch with friends, family, or colleagues on the ground; on the other hand, it’s easy to envision a dystopian future where economy class is a wasteland of one-sided conversations filled with detailed descriptions of medical conditions, swoony lovers who can’t bear to be apart for three hours, heated arguments, mind-numbingly...
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There’s no doubt that six-second video sharing service Vine is a hit, but like any hot new app with a simple but killer raison d’etre, a few additional features wouldn’t be unwelcome. Vine just announced two new features, actually, called “Sessions” and “Time Travel”. Sessions allows you to have up to 10 unfinished posts going at once. That means you can save one and come back to it later, which lets users capture multiple items worth sharing and bide their time before setting them loose in the wild. The Time Travel feature lets you “remove, reorganize or replace any shot” in a given post. That’s a handy way to edit your Vine videos,...
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Barnes and Noble recently indicated that it was planning to launch at least one new Nook device in time for the holidays, with more in the pipeline, and according to The Digital Reader’s sources, that time may well be in early October. The sources indicate that B&N is likely releasing both a tablet and an ereader. There’s little information beyond that at this point, unfortunately, but looking at the company’s current ereader and tablet lineup, it’s intriguing to consider what might pop up. For instance, the Nook HD and HD+ got the Google Play treatment earlier this year, which increased their value and appeal and put them on more equal footing with competition such...
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It’s not news that Android has some security problems, but here’s another one: Android wallets aren’t secure. According to Bitcoin, the issue stems from a secure random number generator in the OS itself, which is vulnerable to exploits. The generator is needed to secure the wallets, so thus, the wallets are not secure. Bitcoin notes that apps where users don’t control private keys, such as exchange frontends Coinbase or Mt Gox, aren’t affected, but many apps are. Bitcoin posted an “incomplete list” that includes Bitcoin Wallet, BitcoinSpinner, Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet, and blockchain.info. blockchain.info app The apps are being updated, so users can head...
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Apple recently hit the 50 billion app download mark with its App Store; Google just did the same. Apple did it in five years; Google did it (between the Android Market and Google Play store) in four. Further, Mashable says that Google CEO Larry Page noted that the company has paid out more money to Android app developers in the first half of 2013 than it did in all of 2012. This of course follow news that Google pulled in a cool $14 billion in Q2, not to mention the fact that 1.5 million Android devices are currently being activated every day (with 1 billion total activated Android devices within reach before the weather turns cold). Competitor Apple is of course still raking in money hand over...
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Facebook Home was--sorry, is--an intriguing idea, and it’s not surprising that around a million people downloaded the Facebook-integrated skin and app launcher. However, user ratings for Facebook Home have been less than stellar, and it wasn’t exactly a good sign that AT&T slashed the cost of the HTC First, the first smartphone to ship with Facebook home already onboard (our review here), from $100 to $0.99 after lackluster interest. All Facebook can really do at this point is try and make Facebook Home better, which is exactly what the company is doing. Facebook previously announced that it would be adding a dock and folders to the skin, as well as the ability to edit who can...
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It’s the little things that make life sweet, and here’s one for those who want to use the Google Keyboard but don’t have a Google Nexus device: Google is releasing its stock keyboard as a free app in the Google Play store, and it’ll work on any device running Android 4.0 and higher. Google Keyboard features Gesture Typing (with dynamic floating preview), which speeds up entry by letting the user swipe around to enter characters and automatically finishing a word without the user having to hit the spacebar. There’s also a Voice Typing feature that lets you jot things down using voice recognition capabilities for those times when keeping your eyes and fingers on the...
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Google’s new music subscription service, Google Play Music All Access, is live. You can head over to the Google Play store and sign up today for one of two plans--the unlimited “All Access” service or the free “Standard” option. Both versions offer you an online “locker” where you can store up to 20,000 of your own uploaded songs. You can also purchase any of the 18 million or so tracks in Google’s massive library in the Google Play store and access your music pretty much anywhere without bothering with syncing because Google keeps your library updated across all of your devices. And although you can of course listen online, you can select various...
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We’ve been eagerly anticipating the Google I/O conference because of course Google saved up lots of goodies for its annual event, and the company did not disappoint. Google unloaded with a ton of updates and new products, so let’s dig in. Android First off, the Android platform is enjoying a number of new upgrades. Google announced Google Play Music All Access, which is the oft-rumored Google music subscription service; for a monthly fee of $9.99, you can create “radio stations” based on any artist, store up to 20,000 of your own uploaded tracks in the cloud, and also plumb the depths of Google’s All Access catalog of tunes. The service will work across all of your...
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Mother’s Day sales are already upon us, and predictably, some tablets and ereaders are on sale to entice buyers to make their moms really, really happy this year. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, for example, is on sale through next weekend for $179 (down from $199) with a special checkout code, but Barnes & Noble will not be outdone. The company put its Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets on sale for a limited time, too. The 7-inch Nook HD is down to $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB), while the 9-inch Nook HD+ is $179 (16GB) and $209 (32GB). Yes, the 16GB Nook HD is the same price as the 16GB Nook HD+. Go figure. Although competing tablets sales around a holiday is nothing new, the price drop on the...
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Google has its hands in every other aspect of the tech industry, so why not gaming, too? It appears as though the company is eyeing a run at the gaming market by hiring Noah Falstein as its “Chief Game Designer”. Falstein’s LinkedIn profile has been updated to reflect his new title, which is the latest in a long career. He started out in 1980 and put in time at (the recently-defunct) Lucasfilm Games as well as 3DO and Dreamworks Interactive. This, in addition to a chairmanship with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), a column in Game Developer Magazine, consulting work with The Inspiracy , and international speaking engagements. It’s anyone’s guess...
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Iceland has a problem that people in most countries don’t really have to worry about: Inbreeding. The tiny nation is home to just 320,000 people, which puts it right between the Kalamazoo/Portage, MI and South Bend/Mishawaka, IN metro areas in terms of population. Imagine if your choices for life partners were limited to the South Bend area. (No disrespect to all the Hoosiers out there.) Now imagine that was the case for your entire family, dating back generations. An unnerving number of the people in your small region would be related to you in some way. Because technology is great and incest is not, an anti-virus software entrepreneur named Friðrik Skúlason teamed up with medical...
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Amazon’s Appstore is sort of the “other” Android app store (after the Google Play store) but the former is expanding broadly. The store will launch internationally this summer, thus making the Appstore available to about 200 new countries, including the usual suspects (Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, India, etc.) as well as smaller areas such as Papua New Guinea and Vatican City. Previously, the Amazon Appstore for Android was available in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Before the big summer expansion, developers can get going by hitting up the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal. Amazon isn’t shy about claiming that its Appstore is a...
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Google has been busily clearing out crapps from the Google Play store this year, and now the company is cleaning up the store’s interface, as well. Google announced changes to the Google Play store today, which are designed to make the interface simpler and clearer as well as easier to search. “The new design focuses on bigger images that jump off the page,” said Google in a blog post. “Similarly themed content is grouped together so you can hone in on a magazine to read or an app to try.” You’ll also see additional recommendations when scrolling down a page, and Google says that it’s streamlined the checkout process. The facelift is rolling out to devices...
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Talk about spring cleaning. According to techcrunch, citing “a company in the mobile app industry which has insight into changes like this”, some 60,000 apps were removed from the Google Play store in February. That’s a startling number, considering that the total number of apps in the Google Play store is around 700,000. Frankly, it’s about time. Say what you will about Apple and its Steve Jobs-esque control-freakishness with the App Store, but the number of crappy apps (or simply, “crapps”) that gets through the army of Apple’s app reviewers is negligible compared to what lands in Android’s premiere app store. A fitter, happier Google Play store...
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Well it wasn’t quite the glamorous announcement in New York City that we were expecting thanks to Hurricane Sandy, but Google did decide to unveil the new spate of products that it was (presumably) going to talk about at today’s cancelled event. The big news is that, as expected, Google has a Nexus 10 tablet and Nexus 4 smartphone. LG is the manufacturer of the Nexus 4, and the phone features Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, a quad-core SnapDragon S4 processor, large 4.7-inch Gorilla Glass 2 display, 2GB of RAM, wireless charging capabilities, and micro USB and SlimPort HDMI ports. Google baked in Photo Sphere for taking 360-degree photos and Google Now, which has more cards than ever for...
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Google’s Bouncer just made sense; unlike Apple’s heavily curated walled-garden app store, Google Play is a target for malicious (and/or downright crappy) apps, so having Bouncer in place to scan submitted apps for malicious software to protect Google Play customers was necessary. Google kept Bouncer’s intimate details under wraps to keep it from being hacked or exploited, but like death and taxes, someone was bound to find a way to sneak something nasty past Google’s door man. Image credit: Android Police Fortunately, the successful parties turned out to be Charlie Miller and Jon Oberheide, a pair of researchers who will be presenting at the SummerCon conference soon....
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