5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week! – Android Apps Weekly
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Sponsored by: Magnetic Balls Puzzle Game
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Magnetic Balls Puzzle Game is a game that has you shooting balls at other balls. The balls are magnetized which can have either untoward or unexpected benefits to each and every shot. It’s a colorful, fun game with power ups, many levels, and plenty of content to enjoy. There is even a color blind mode for you folks who have trouble seeing colors. It’s available in the Play Store right now for free and we’d like to thank them for sponsoring the Android Apps Weekly show.
Welcome back to the Android Apps Weekly show! Let’s take a look at the top headlines.
- Google released Arc Welder for Chrome browser and ChromeOS this last week. The extension allows you to run a limited number of Android apps straight from the browser which can be fun or even useful for some people. It’s not perfect but it’s getting there.
- As part of the April Fool’s Day festivities, Google turned Google Maps into a Pac-Man game. It was a goofy and fun little thing to experience. You just have to make sure you look at a place with enough roads or it won’t let you play.
- Developer HandyGames is celebrating their 15 year anniversary today by putting all of their titles on sale for $0.15. Follow the link to see the list in its entirety. Most of them are fairly well regarded and $0.15 is a steal for pretty much any paid game.
- WhatsApp announced a calling feature a while back but it was invite only. Now, there are reports that WhatsApp calling is rolling out to all users even without an invite. If you don’t have it yet, patience because it’s coming soon.
- A new Gmail update has included support for a unified inbox even for Yahoo and Outlook accounts. Other improvements include better auto-complete for keyword searching, larger attachment previews, and bug fixes along with performance improvements.
If you want to see all of the new releases, updates, and headlines, don’t forget to check out this week’s newsletter and while you’re there, bookmark it for later or use your email and sign up. We send one out every Friday and it’s a great way to stay up to date on the latest in Android apps news!
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Goodreads
[Price: Free]
Goodreads is a sort of social network for readers that helps you find new books and novels to read based on the reviews left by friends. The app received a huge update this last week that includes a significant redesign. Most of the rest of the improvements are based around the redesign including easier to find features and a new Want To Read button to help you save stuff faster. If you like to read books, you should try this out.
Izanagi Online
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Izanagi Online is a new MMORPG designed by the same guy who did Afro Samurai. The game features over 100 quests, four classes, and even a story line that you can play through. The graphics aren’t half bad but there are some early release day bugs and issues so you may want to wait a couple of weeks for those to get worked out.
Marvel Mighty Heroes
[Price: Free with in app purchases]
Marvel Mighty Heroes is a new online hack and slash game where you can play as your favorite Marvel characters online with up to four other real people. It’s a fun little time waster but like any new release, there are some issues here and there so proceed with caution.
Riff
[Price: Free]
Riff is a new video sharing app by Facebook that allows you to make video with friends. Here’s how it works. You post a video to the service, then friends can add to it. From there, the friends of your friends can add to it. It’s definitely something unique and worth trying out if you’re into this kind of thing.
Tomb Raider 1
[Price: $0.99]
The original Tomb Raider has been re-released to Android by Square Enix. The game has been lightly retouched for HD screens but otherwise contains pretty much all of the puzzles and fun of the original. Some have lamented the controls and there are some bugs here and there but it’s only $0.99 which is cheap for a Square Enix game.
Wrap up
Thanks for reading and watching the Android Apps Weekly show! If we missed any news, headlines, or releases, let us know in the comments!
Android malware installs decreased by nearly 50% in 2014, says Google
Security isn’t to be taken lightly, especially when it comes to dealing with sensitive consumer information. To shed some light on its recent efforts, Google released a whitepaper earlier today that explains what exactly the Android security team has been working on in the past year. The report, titled Android Security State of the Union, analyzes billions of data points gathered throughout 2014 that detail the current state of Android security.
The full report is quite lengthy, but there are a few main points Google would like to highlight. For starters, the company says the worldwide rate of Android malware installs decreased by nearly 50% throughout 2014. And over the entire year, fewer than 1% of all Android devices contained any type of harmful application at all. Of the devices that only installed applications from the Google Play Store, fewer than .15% contained a harmful app.
In addition, the company explains that over 1 billion devices are protected by its Verify Apps service, which now scans over 200 million devices per day. Lastly, the Android team and all affiliates responded to 79 externally reported security issues overall, and over 25,000 applications in the Play Store were updated following security notifications from Google.
Now, all of these numbers Google has laid to us out are quite broad, especially given the company’s meaning of the word malware (or Potentially Harmful Apps). But if you are interested in getting some more information on specifics, Google has detailed everything in a very lengthy report, which you can find here.
Google has already made clear its intentions to focus more on reviewing policy violations in Google Play in hopes to reduce malware even further over the next year. Even though many users are still concerned with Android security, the company hopes this new report will bring those worries to an end.
Google+ photos in Drive coming to Google Apps users April 6
Earlier in the week, Google gave notice that photos uploaded to Google+ would be forever available in Google Drive. The feature has long been requested since Photos’ debut much the same way Dropbox backs up photos. Well in typical fashion when something arrives from Google, personal users get the new goodies long before Google Apps users. However this doesn’t seem to be the case with this feature.
Google announced today that Google Photos in Drive will be coming to Google Apps users on Monday, April 6; only a week after personal users received the feature. Like personal users, all users will see the new menu item in drive labeled “Google Photos.” Upon launching, an notification will appear in the Drive web UI. The kicker is that photos and videos DO count toward storage quotas for items uploaded via auto backup.
So if you use your Apps email address for your Google+ profile, you’ll be able to auto backup to Drive in just a few day’s time.
source: Google
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Android malware was cut by 50 percent in 2014
Google’s crackdown on malware has been working, at least according to them. In a new Android Security Report, Google says that the global rate of malware installs fell by 50 percent in 2014.
According to Google, only 1 percent of all Android devices had a harmful application in 2014. There’s even better news for those that only install applications from the Play Store as that number drops to .15 percent.
Google also provided device manufacturers with 79 security patches, and improved their abilities in responding to potential vulnerabilities. 73 of these patches have been released to AOSP, while the remaining 6 will get released with next AOSP update.
Google’s report is 44 pages and includes more information about the vulnerabilities, malware, and more. You will find it in the source link below.
source: Android Security 2014 Year in Review
via: The Verge
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Google publushes stats to show that Android is safe
Google announced through a white paper that Android is safe and is only getting safer. Everyone should understand that cyber threats are not gone. We witnessed Sony get hacked in 2014, which was one of the biggest eye-openers for all of us last year. I think many of us realized, if Sony can get hacked, so can we.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft understand that security is on the forefront of everyone’s concerns when it comes to digital data. We also saw Snapchat hacks last year where thousands of private photos were leaked to the web for everyone’s viewing pleasure/displeasure. Google knows security is vital to all of us, whether we have private photos to protect, banking information, private emails, etc., most of us have something we want to keep private. If our privacy were to be violated, I am sure most of us would start looking for another platform to use.
Google has analyzed billions of data points, and in the white paper they give stats on how many people are protected.
– 1 billion devices are protected by Google Play – for perspective, the US has a population of 318 million people. That would be over 3x the population of the US. The UK on the other hand has a population of 64 million people.
– Fewer than 1% of Android devices had a potentially harmful app. That means, in all likelihood, you are safe. No system is perfect, but less than 1% if pretty good. That would be an A+ grade at a university.
– The overall worldwide rate of Potentially Harmful Application (PHA) installs decreased by nearly 50% between Q1 and Q4 2014. – Google is getting better at protecting us.
I’ve used Apple devices for years before I used Android. My own experience leads me to believe Android is the most safe environment out of both platforms.
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WSJ: EU is preparing to hit Google with antitrust charges
The European Commission is gearing to launch antitrust charges against Google over alleged anti-competitive practices.
Following more than five years of investigation and three unsuccessful settlement attempts, the European Commission, EU’s top antitrust authority, appears to be in the final stages of preparing formal antitrust charges against Google.
Google, which holds up to 90 percent of the search market in Europe, has been facing accusations of anti-competitive practices, including using its dominant position in search to funnel traffic to its own properties, rather than competitors’, “scrapping” content from news and media sites, and imposing unfair restrictions to companies that look to operate on its platforms.
According to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, the EC is currently asking companies who have filed complaints against Google for the permission to publicize information that they supplied to the Commission confidentially. People familiar with the flow of antitrust investigations tell WSJ that this is a sure sign that the Commission will soon file formal antitrust charges against Google.
An eventual antitrust lawsuit would be the biggest since the famous suit against Microsoft, which the EC found guilty of anti-competitive behavior in promoting Windows and Internet Explorer. Microsoft paid $1.8 billion in fines and agreed to change its practices.
To be clear, there’s still time for Google and the EC to reach a settlement, though European leadership seems to favor formal charges over a settlement. And, even if Google is charged in an antitrust case, a settlement can be reached at any time. These type of affairs tend to drag on for years; if the EC finally decides to fine Google, it can slap the search giant with the equivalent of up to 10 percent of its annual revenue.
While Europe has been taking a more aggressive stance against Google, the Mountain View company had similar issues across the Atlantic. The FTC decided not to open an antitrust case against Google, but the decision has been controversial even among the regulator’s staff.
New Chromebook ad shows they are ‘for everyone, everywhere’
After the recent announcement of new Chrome OS-powered devices, consumers have options on the low-end and high-end to match their needs. There are devices ranging from $149 to more than $1,000. So it makes sense that the latest advertisement for Chromebooks focuses on the devices being ‘for everyone, everywhere.’ The ad shifts through various scenes in which people are using a Chromebook differently. The uses highlight education, photography, editing, entertainment, and more. Some of the brands spotted are not available in the United States which actually shows how easy it is for Chrome OS to go from market to market with ease.
Hit the break for the video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
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Yale Study discusses disconnect between what you actually know and what you assume to know from Googling
In a world where everything you want to know about anything is readily available by just visiting Google, it’s never been easier to educate yourself in the vast varieties of human knowledge. From mathematics to sociological theories, it’s all there for your cherry-picking pleasure.
But if you’ve spent any time on Internet forums or maybe even at real-life social events, you inevitably come into contact with “Internet Intellectuals”. This term is not for those who just simply read something cool on the Internet, but rather those theoretical physicists who were awarded their PhD from the University of Google or the YouTube Institute of Technology.
Well, psychologists from Yale have made a recent publication in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that discusses this very phenomenon.
Here is the abstract of the article in case you don’t feel like visiting the .pdf link just at this moment:
As the Internet has become a nearly ubiquitous resource for acquiring knowledge about the world, questions have arisen about its potential effects on cognition. Here we show that searching the Internet for explanatory knowledge creates an illusion whereby people mistake access to information for their own personal understanding of the information. Evidence from 9 experiments shows that searching for information online leads to an increase in self-assessed knowledge as people mistakenly think they have more knowledge “in the head,” even seeing their own brains as more active as depicted by functional MRI (fMRI) images.
What this really means is that many people go from just having “read something cool on the Internet” to making assumptions that they’re knowledgeable in the subject material, to the extent that they feel comfortable saying they feel knowledgeable in tangential topics. People confuse what they actually know with what they know they can look up.
You might be thinking, “Well, how is this any different than learning from a library?” The psychologists state that this too is possible.
This illusion of knowledge might well be found for sources other than the Internet: for example, an expert librarian may experience a similar illusion when accessing a reference Rolodex. An individual in a highly integrated social environment (Hutchins, 1995) may conflate knowledge “in the head” with knowledge stored in other human sources, such as fellow members of a cockpit crew. While such effects may be possible, the rise of the Internet has surely broadened the scope of this effect.
This may all be typically innocent, though obnoxious, but, in my opinion, the real issue comes into play when you start entering the realm of policy making. I can think of one topic right off the top of my head where armchair scientists reign supreme: anthropogenic climate change. Or just look at the recent vaccination-deniers debacle.
Just remember, wisdom is knowing just how ignorant you are, and that’s okay and admirable.
Source: Yale via Engadget. Banner image: Science Over a Cuppa
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Google introduces new analytics tools to help game developers
Following up on an announcement a few weeks ago at the Game Developers Conference, Google is make the new Play Games Player Analytics tool available to all developers through the Google Play Developer Console. The Analytics tool will help developers manage their business to revenue targets, identify hot spots using metrics to develop new game updates, and understand how players are progressing, spending and churning.
Google is making the Analytics tool available for no additional effort for developers who are using Google Play game services in their titles. All they need to do is visit their Google Play Developer Console to access the reports generated by the tool. If a developer is not using Google’s game service, they can add this tool with a few lines of code added to their game, although it appears this will also add Google Play game services to a title.
Besides the basic reports and metrics, developers can also get access to a Sources and Sinks report if they enable Events from Google Play game services.
The revenue target tool gives developers the ability to set a daily goal for revenue. The report will then show Target vs Actual data. A Business Drivers report gives developers benchmark data so they can see how their game stacks up against the competition. Other reports will show player retention statistics and another will help developers identify which parts of a game players are struggling with or where they enjoy spending their time.
The Sources and Sinks report can be used by developers to analyze the in-game economy they have created in their titles. The data will show how players are earning rewards and how they spend them.
For game players, this should mean even better games and game updates hit the market as developers have more information and data to support their development strategy.
source: Android Developers Blog
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Google Cardboard: A low-priced virtual reality experience
With Google I/O 2016 getting closer and closer, we wanted to take a look back to I/O 2015. Or more specifically, we wanted to take a look back at something Google introduced and gave away to attendees in 2015. That item was Google Cardboard, and while many took it as nothing more than a novelty item worth a few minutes of fun — we feel there is a bit more to Cardboard. We’ve seen plenty of virtual reality announcements in recent months, and those announcements are the reason we decided to take a look back at Cardboard.
You see, Google Cardboard is a solid introduction to virtual reality. We aren’t saying the experience is perfect, but there are some key selling points for Cardboard. For one, there are several companies offering a Google Cardboard headset. Perhaps even more important is the price point. You can easily find a Cardboard headset (all linked from the official Google Cardboard site) with prices ranging from $15 to $25. But you can also do a bit of Google searching and find simpler unbranded options for as little as a few dollars.
Personally, I paid roughly $15 for a handful of headsets (that were shipped out of China) so I could share with friends and family. There is nothing special about the model I picked up, and honestly, I don’t even remember the specific shop where I made the purchase. But that is not the real point here. With the $15 I spent I was able to do a bit of playing, and also allow some friends and family members to do the same.
Basically, those few Google Cardboard units allowed people to get a taste of virtual reality. And what I found isn’t all that surprising. Some people really enjoyed the experience and were excited to use a higher quality viewer, and some were completely turned off by the experience. Anyway, once you receive your Cardboard, you’ll likely have to put it together. That was a simple process, and also a fun process as it turned into some quality time with my 7 year old (who also seemed to enjoy the virtual reality experience).
Along with the Cardboard viewer, you’ll also need to download and install the Cardboard app on your smartphone. Google is offering the Cardboard app in the Play Store. The app is free to download, free to use, and will run on devices with Android 4.1 or later. I’ve used it on several devices including a Samsung Galaxy S III and a OnePlus One. That brings another item worth considering — some of these Cardboard viewers are available in different sizes, so make sure you order a viewer that will fit your particular smartphone.
The app itself is pretty basic and easy to use. By default you have the standard Cardboard demos to get you started. Those include a Tutorial, Tour Guide, Exhibit, Windy Day, Earth, YouTube, and Photo Sphere. And once you get through those, you can tap the “Get Cardboard apps” option for more fun. A tap of that link includes a few more Cardboard apps with options ranging from a VR Cosmic Roller Coaster, to a virtual tour of the Google Shop at Currys, to a Paul McCartney concert. Nicely, these other Cardboard apps are available for free. And if I can give just one tip — plug in some headphones when you are using Cardboard.
What We Liked
- You will not have to spend very much money to enjoy Cardboard.
- Can be a fun project and experience for those with children.
Room For Improvement
- This is a case of getting what you pay for. Some of the lower cost viewers will have lower quality lenses and parts.
- Seems to be a good introduction, but then stops short for those really enjoying the experience.
Overall I’ve enjoyed my time with Google Cardboard. My family (and friends) have had their viewers for about a month now, and while they don’t seem to get as much use as when they first arrived, I cannot say I regret making the purchase. Well, maybe I regret the purchase just a little bit because it showed me how much fun virtual reality can be and has me itching to buy something more professional to get a better experience.
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