Google Keep makes to-do lists easier to find with labels
If you’re the type who maintains a massive amount of to-do lists and notes, you likely need a system to organize the things that keep you, well, organized. That’s probably why Google has introduced labels for its Keep note-taking app on Android. It’s pretty self-explanatory: you can tag files with labels of your choice (such as “Travel,” “to pack,” “shopping,” “grocery,” etc.) to make them easier to find later on. They’re not exactly folders that can keep things tidy, but tags can prevent you from wasting time finding a list that’s supposed to save you time. In addition to the new labeling system, the updated app now also features recurring reminders, which you can set to nudge you every day, week, month or year.
Filed under: Misc, Mobile, Google
Source: Android (Google+), Google Play
LG’s Watch Urbane LTE will soon be available in South Korea for $590
LG is releasing the Watch Urbane LTE in South Korea within the next few days, which means we now have an idea how much one will cost. Turns out the fancy mobile internet-connected smartwatch is priced at 650,000 won or $590 in its home turf. That amount is comparable to the regular Apple Watch that will set you back at least $549, but it could still change when the device arrives stateside. As you might know, the smartwatch has its own SIM card and can make voice calls even without a phone. It can connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth, though, provided it runs Android KitKat or later.
Inside, its components include a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and a 700mAh battery, powering its 1.3-inch round P-OLED display. A few Korean outlets are reporting that the device runs Android Wear, but when we tested one during Mobile World Congress, it was loaded with a proprietary platform based on webOS. Notable features include NFC payment capability, GPS location sharing, speech translator and the choice to use it like a walkie-talkie. Unfortunately, the device’s US availability is still unclear at this point. Since AT&T’s bringing the LTE-less Watch Urbane to the US, though, we’ll keep a close eye on the carrier’s new announcements, just in case.
Filed under: Wearables, Google, LG
Source: LG, The Korea Bizwire
Google Maps now lets you see maps from Google My Maps
The Google Maps team announced the rollout of a new feature to the Android app: the ability to use maps created with My Maps.
A little background is in order: My Maps was originally a feature of the Maps web app introduced in 2007. In 2011, the feature was rolled into the My Places feature, but My Places was not included in the current version of Maps, which landed in 2013. That meant that users who wanted to create their own maps had to use a tool called Google Maps Engine Lite, launched the same year. Finally, in September 2014, Google renamed Engine Lite to My Maps, completing, in a way, the circle. Yeah, we’re confused too…
Google My Maps for Android is a distinct app available in the Play Store that lets you do exactly what the name suggests. Up until now you couldn’t see your custom maps in the main Google Maps app, but that changes.
To see your custom maps in Google Maps, hit the hamburger button, tap “Your Places” and scroll down. You should see all your maps, regardless if they were created with the classic My Maps feature or the new My Maps (Engine Lite). You can’t edit them though, so you will still need the separate My Maps application for that. The availability of the feature doesn’t seem to be conditioned by having the latest Maps version, though an update won’t hurt.
Pfew… that was a lot of “maps!”
Google makes it easier for Android users to view custom maps
A custom map you’ve created for a trip is only useful if you can access it when you need it. Thankfully, Google’s bringing back My Maps integration with Android, so it’s now easier to view your personalized files on mobile. As you might know, you can use My Maps to plan for hiking, canoeing or even for commuting or daily walks, as it lets you place markers on locations and draw lines or shapes to indicate routes. It also allows you to create layers for different kinds of content and even import geographic data, such as a place’s name and coordinates. To view your creations — or others who have shared theirs with you — just launch Google Maps on Android. The update has begun rolling out today, so keep an eye out if you’re planning for a road trip.
The White House and Google are quite chummy report says
With the FTC’s 2012 probe into Google‘s search practices all said and done, it became quite apparent that Mountain View has quite a bit of pull in the nation’s capital. A new report from The Wall Street Journal, high ranking Googler’s, including Mr. Eric Schmidt himself, met with White House officials to the tune of 230 different times across two terms.
If you’re doing the math, that’s about once a week for about four years. These meetings also happened around the time right before the commission and Google settled the antitrust lawsuit. While what exactly was discussed wasn’t shown in those meetings, the FTC insists that it maintains an independence as a regulatory agency. What the WSJ eludes to is that Google’s got some lobbying pull in Washington to defeat just such a major antitrust investigation.
The search giant has shown that it’s got influence and willing to spend money to do so. The company spent $16.8 million last year in lobbying efforts. In a related area, Megan Smith, Google’s former VP is now the US chief technology officer and a high tech adviser to the president.
As time progresses, these relationships and Google’s influence will be called into question and the report shows, that Google’s got the wallet to back it up.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Come comment on this article: The White House and Google are quite chummy report says
Google Play Newsstand adds support for Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Turkey
Content offered in the Play Store can be limited depending upon which country you reside in. Anyone in any country can access free content offered by Google in its digital store; however, only certain countries can make purchases. Today, four new countries received support for Play Newsstand. People in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Turkey can purchase and subscribe to magazines and newspapers from their mobile devices.
Source: Google Play (Google+)
Come comment on this article: Google Play Newsstand adds support for Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Turkey
Things the Google Play Store could improve: Part 2 – In-App Purchases
Editor’s note: this is the second article in this series discussing some potential Google Play Store flaws and what Google could do to improve user experience. Feel free to join the discussion and suggest new topics. You can find a link to part one at the bottom of the page.
In-app purchases have been a sore spot for both Google and consumers for a long time. Despite the overwhelming success of in-app purchases, many consumers are unhappy about the unscrupulous methods that some app and game developers use to procure money from their users. Of course, Google has had minor nightmares of their own, culminating in the FTC decision to make Google pay $19 million to parents when their kids made in-app purchases. In-app purchases are a big deal for developers, but more could be done to make it a more pleasant experience for consumers.
Please note, this is commentary on how the Google Play Store handles in-app purchases and not how app developers actually use them. That’s a wholly different conversation that we’ll all have together eventually.
What is the problem?
In-app purchases have made a negative name for themselves in some circles. The “cash cow” philosophy has been a subject of intense ire from many consumers and it’s even been parodied on shows like South Park. Of course, the stats don’t agree with the criticisms, as in-app purchases account for over 95% of sales in the Google Play Store and has allowed developers to make more money than ever before. So what’s the problem?
In-app purchases account for over 95% of the revenue generated in the Google Play Store
The problem can be summed up in one word: transparency. Let’s do a little thought exercise. Go to any app or game (with in-app purchases) in the Google Play Store that you have never downloaded, used, or even heard of before. Now, using the information only available on the app description page, try to discern the following:
- How many in-app purchases are there in total?
- What kind of in-app purchases are there? Are they consumables (gems), expansions, the pro unlocker, or a subscription?
- How much money is the developer going to ask you to spend?
- What exactly are you getting yourself into?
The fact is that you cannot answer these questions with the information available on the app description right now unless the developers go through the trouble of explaining it themselves. When you combine that closed-doors approach with a few bad experiences with “cash cow” apps and games, you end up with a consumer base that not only distrusts the whole system, but actively dislikes it. Let’s discuss these issues a little more in depth, shall we?
Problem #1: What are we actually paying for?
The core problem is that we simply can’t educate ourselves about an app or a game without downloading it. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if there were only a few apps and games. However, there are currently well over one million apps and games in the Google Play Store. That means the process of finding and downloading each app and game that might look interesting just to see how much it will cost us is counterproductive and even a bit tedious. Without proper information, it severely bottlenecks the experience consumers could (and dare we say: should) be having.
Downloading each app and game just to see how much it’ll cost is counterproductive.
The questions begin to arise. Why doesn’t Google just give us a labeled list of all of the in-app purchases? It’s a good question and even I don’t understand why Google hasn’t done something like this yet. iTunes actually does this very well. If you look at the Clash of Clans iTunes page, you’ll see a list of the popular in-app purchases. You can clearly see that each in-app purchase revolves around buying a certain denomination of gems and, using a bit of logic, you can deduce that Clash of Clans operates using consumable in-app purchases before you ever download it.
It would almost be better if the price range didn’t exist at all.
Currently, there is a less-than-useful “price range” feature that labels all in-app purchases as “items”. The price range shows the cheapest and most expensive in-app purchase an application has or, if the app only has one, it will show a single price. It would almost be better if the price range didn’t exist at all because it doesn’t provide any useful information. Yes, apps with in-app purchases do, in fact, contain items. Yes, those items cost anywhere from $0.99 to $99.99. These are all things we knew the moment we saw the “offers in-app purchases” label.
The long and short of it is simply this: Google does a bad job at showing what these applications have to offer and what few attempts they’ve made to help feel halfhearted and rushed.
Problem #2: Subscriptions
Subscriptions are a huge problem in the Google Play Store for three reason:
- Subscription prices don’t appear in the “price range” portion of the Google Play Store. Don’t believe me? Look at Spotify’s app. It shows that there are in-app purchases, but no price is given. In fact, there’s isn’t so much as a dollar symbol anywhere on the page. There is something wrong with that.
- Apps and games that require a subscription do not have to use Google’s in-house system to process payments. Spotify, most VPN apps, and most antivirus apps have accounts that you can create and manage independently from Google. That makes them almost impossible to police on Google Play.
Subscriptions live in a reality all on their own.
- A few apps, such as Google Play Music, have a subscription service but there’s no mention of it anywhere. Again, if you don’t believe me, look for yourself. There is no price, no dollar sign, no in-app purchase label, or anything to indicate a cost. Spotify does a little better because it at least gets labeled for having in-app purchases. Humorously enough, Norton Security has the label and the subscription price listed in the price range section of their Google Play page.
It appears as though subscriptions live in a reality all on their own. On top of being wildly inconsistent, they appear to be able to skirt the rules other apps have to play by.
How does it get fixed?
Thankfully, most of the problems could be easily fixed with a bit of effort. Here are a few ideas we had:
- Show us all of the in-app purchases – It’s really as simple as that. Put all of them there and show us what they are. Google Play uses a modular UI and I don’t think anyone would be bummed out if they added a module that showed us the in-app purchases in their entirety, including cost and name. Bonus points if they tell us what kind of in-app purchase it is (consumables, pro versions, expansions, subscriptions, etc). If Google cannot grab this information using their APIs, give developers a box in the publisher dashboard where they can input the prices themselves.
- Create a standard for subscription services to follow – There currently is no standard for subscription services. Some show prices, others do not. Some are labeled as offering in-app purchases, others are not. Google needs to figure out a standard and begin to hold everyone (including itself) to it. The box in the publisher dashboard idea would work well here as well, especially for developers who don’t use Google services to charge for subscriptions.
-
Create a bottom line requirement for labeling apps – There seems to be no real standard for what counts as “having in-app purchases” and there really needs to be. Amazon Shopping and Google Play Music both allow you to spend money in the app, but don’t carry the IAP label. Spotify does have the label but doesn’t show a price. Grand Theft Auto titles are labeled as having in-app purchases but they actually don’t have any at all. It’s maddeningly inconsistent.
In-app purchase labels are maddeningly inconsistent.
- Allow us to refine our searches for certain types of in-app purchases – This one is a bit complicated. A majority of people who feel disdain for IAPs really only dislike certain types of IAPs such as consumables. If consumers can search for apps and games without those specific kinds of in-app purchases (or no in-app purchases at all), they will be able to find more apps that are suited to their liking and that will ultimately improve their experience.
- Give apps with in-app purchases their own top charts – This is the totally crazy, shot in the dark suggestion with a lot of potentially positive repercussions. With the apps and games with IAPs in their own category, it helps level the playing field for the standard free and free-paid paradigms without excluding IAPs entirely. This cleaner, more organized layout would result in people finding popular free apps and games and popular paid apps and games with no in-app purchases far more easily.
Wrap up
Listen folks, in-app purchases are a good thing. Revenue to developers has increased by leaps and bounds since its inception and they really are making more money now than ever before. That has translated to more content and higher quality content. There is no arguing that fact. Back in 2010, we had 700,000 apps and the best of the best were Flickster, Angry Birds, and Skype didn’t even allow for video calls on mobile yet.
Today we have more than double what we had in 2010 and they include massive, gorgeous games and innovative, beautifully designed apps. In 2010, Google Play (formerly the Android Market) made just over $100 million in total revenue. In 2013, after the first full year of in-app purchases, Google Play made an estimated $1.3 billion. It has only gone up since then. Even if you’re against the practice ethically, no one can argue with the results. IAPs are why most developers make money on Android.
IAPs are why most developers make money on Android.
However, I’m not so stuck in my ways that I can’t admit that there are a few bad apples (proportionately speaking) that make the whole bunch look bad. With the suggested improvements, the transparency will allow consumers to make better, more informed decisions about what apps they want to download. There is even a small, outside chance that “cash grab” developers may use the pressure of full transparency to tone down their aggressive strategies and try to compete by simplifying their pay structure and building better games. Nothing gets the ball rolling like transparency.
By giving consumers more control and information with the transparency, improved charts, and refined searches, a lot of the negativity could potentially subside as frustrated users will enjoy a new-found proliferation of apps and games that they actually want instead of being forced to browse through stuff they do not.
Who knows, one day maybe being labeled as having in-app purchases won’t be such a bad thing but it’s definitely not something that is just going to happen organically. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter in the comments!
Check out the other parts of the series:
Things the Google Play Store could improve: Part 2 – In-App Purchases
Editor’s note: this is the second article in this series discussing some potential Google Play Store flaws and what Google could do to improve user experience. Feel free to join the discussion and suggest new topics. You can find a link to part one at the bottom of the page.
In-app purchases have been a sore spot for both Google and consumers for a long time. Despite the overwhelming success of in-app purchases, many consumers are unhappy about the unscrupulous methods that some app and game developers use to procure money from their users. Of course, Google has had minor nightmares of their own, culminating in the FTC decision to make Google pay $19 million to parents when their kids made in-app purchases. In-app purchases are a big deal for developers, but more could be done to make it a more pleasant experience for consumers.
Please note, this is commentary on how the Google Play Store handles in-app purchases and not how app developers actually use them. That’s a wholly different conversation that we’ll all have together eventually.
What is the problem?
In-app purchases have made a negative name for themselves in some circles. The “cash cow” philosophy has been a subject of intense ire from many consumers and it’s even been parodied on shows like South Park. Of course, the stats don’t agree with the criticisms, as in-app purchases account for over 95% of sales in the Google Play Store and has allowed developers to make more money than ever before. So what’s the problem?
In-app purchases account for over 95% of the revenue generated in the Google Play Store
The problem can be summed up in one word: transparency. Let’s do a little thought exercise. Go to any app or game (with in-app purchases) in the Google Play Store that you have never downloaded, used, or even heard of before. Now, using the information only available on the app description page, try to discern the following:
- How many in-app purchases are there in total?
- What kind of in-app purchases are there? Are they consumables (gems), expansions, the pro unlocker, or a subscription?
- How much money is the developer going to ask you to spend?
- What exactly are you getting yourself into?
The fact is that you cannot answer these questions with the information available on the app description right now unless the developers go through the trouble of explaining it themselves. When you combine that closed-doors approach with a few bad experiences with “cash cow” apps and games, you end up with a consumer base that not only distrusts the whole system, but actively dislikes it. Let’s discuss these issues a little more in depth, shall we?
Problem #1: What are we actually paying for?
The core problem is that we simply can’t educate ourselves about an app or a game without downloading it. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if there were only a few apps and games. However, there are currently well over one million apps and games in the Google Play Store. That means the process of finding and downloading each app and game that might look interesting just to see how much it will cost us is counterproductive and even a bit tedious. Without proper information, it severely bottlenecks the experience consumers could (and dare we say: should) be having.
Downloading each app and game just to see how much it’ll cost is counterproductive.
The questions begin to arise. Why doesn’t Google just give us a labeled list of all of the in-app purchases? It’s a good question and even I don’t understand why Google hasn’t done something like this yet. iTunes actually does this very well. If you look at the Clash of Clans iTunes page, you’ll see a list of the popular in-app purchases. You can clearly see that each in-app purchase revolves around buying a certain denomination of gems and, using a bit of logic, you can deduce that Clash of Clans operates using consumable in-app purchases before you ever download it.
It would almost be better if the price range didn’t exist at all.
Currently, there is a less-than-useful “price range” feature that labels all in-app purchases as “items”. The price range shows the cheapest and most expensive in-app purchase an application has or, if the app only has one, it will show a single price. It would almost be better if the price range didn’t exist at all because it doesn’t provide any useful information. Yes, apps with in-app purchases do, in fact, contain items. Yes, those items cost anywhere from $0.99 to $99.99. These are all things we knew the moment we saw the “offers in-app purchases” label.
The long and short of it is simply this: Google does a bad job at showing what these applications have to offer and what few attempts they’ve made to help feel halfhearted and rushed.
Problem #2: Subscriptions
Subscriptions are a huge problem in the Google Play Store for three reason:
- Subscription prices don’t appear in the “price range” portion of the Google Play Store. Don’t believe me? Look at Spotify’s app. It shows that there are in-app purchases, but no price is given. In fact, there’s isn’t so much as a dollar symbol anywhere on the page. There is something wrong with that.
- Apps and games that require a subscription do not have to use Google’s in-house system to process payments. Spotify, most VPN apps, and most antivirus apps have accounts that you can create and manage independently from Google. That makes them almost impossible to police on Google Play.
Subscriptions live in a reality all on their own.
- A few apps, such as Google Play Music, have a subscription service but there’s no mention of it anywhere. Again, if you don’t believe me, look for yourself. There is no price, no dollar sign, no in-app purchase label, or anything to indicate a cost. Spotify does a little better because it at least gets labeled for having in-app purchases. Humorously enough, Norton Security has the label and the subscription price listed in the price range section of their Google Play page.
It appears as though subscriptions live in a reality all on their own. On top of being wildly inconsistent, they appear to be able to skirt the rules other apps have to play by.
How does it get fixed?
Thankfully, most of the problems could be easily fixed with a bit of effort. Here are a few ideas we had:
- Show us all of the in-app purchases – It’s really as simple as that. Put all of them there and show us what they are. Google Play uses a modular UI and I don’t think anyone would be bummed out if they added a module that showed us the in-app purchases in their entirety, including cost and name. Bonus points if they tell us what kind of in-app purchase it is (consumables, pro versions, expansions, subscriptions, etc). If Google cannot grab this information using their APIs, give developers a box in the publisher dashboard where they can input the prices themselves.
- Create a standard for subscription services to follow – There currently is no standard for subscription services. Some show prices, others do not. Some are labeled as offering in-app purchases, others are not. Google needs to figure out a standard and begin to hold everyone (including itself) to it. The box in the publisher dashboard idea would work well here as well, especially for developers who don’t use Google services to charge for subscriptions.
-
Create a bottom line requirement for labeling apps – There seems to be no real standard for what counts as “having in-app purchases” and there really needs to be. Amazon Shopping and Google Play Music both allow you to spend money in the app, but don’t carry the IAP label. Spotify does have the label but doesn’t show a price. Grand Theft Auto titles are labeled as having in-app purchases but they actually don’t have any at all. It’s maddeningly inconsistent.
In-app purchase labels are maddeningly inconsistent.
- Allow us to refine our searches for certain types of in-app purchases – This one is a bit complicated. A majority of people who feel disdain for IAPs really only dislike certain types of IAPs such as consumables. If consumers can search for apps and games without those specific kinds of in-app purchases (or no in-app purchases at all), they will be able to find more apps that are suited to their liking and that will ultimately improve their experience.
- Give apps with in-app purchases their own top charts – This is the totally crazy, shot in the dark suggestion with a lot of potentially positive repercussions. With the apps and games with IAPs in their own category, it helps level the playing field for the standard free and free-paid paradigms without excluding IAPs entirely. This cleaner, more organized layout would result in people finding popular free apps and games and popular paid apps and games with no in-app purchases far more easily.
Wrap up
Listen folks, in-app purchases are a good thing. Revenue to developers has increased by leaps and bounds since its inception and they really are making more money now than ever before. That has translated to more content and higher quality content. There is no arguing that fact. Back in 2010, we had 700,000 apps and the best of the best were Flickster, Angry Birds, and Skype didn’t even allow for video calls on mobile yet.
Today we have more than double what we had in 2010 and they include massive, gorgeous games and innovative, beautifully designed apps. In 2010, Google Play (formerly the Android Market) made just over $100 million in total revenue. In 2013, after the first full year of in-app purchases, Google Play made an estimated $1.3 billion. It has only gone up since then. Even if you’re against the practice ethically, no one can argue with the results. IAPs are why most developers make money on Android.
IAPs are why most developers make money on Android.
However, I’m not so stuck in my ways that I can’t admit that there are a few bad apples (proportionately speaking) that make the whole bunch look bad. With the suggested improvements, the transparency will allow consumers to make better, more informed decisions about what apps they want to download. There is even a small, outside chance that “cash grab” developers may use the pressure of full transparency to tone down their aggressive strategies and try to compete by simplifying their pay structure and building better games. Nothing gets the ball rolling like transparency.
By giving consumers more control and information with the transparency, improved charts, and refined searches, a lot of the negativity could potentially subside as frustrated users will enjoy a new-found proliferation of apps and games that they actually want instead of being forced to browse through stuff they do not.
Who knows, one day maybe being labeled as having in-app purchases won’t be such a bad thing but it’s definitely not something that is just going to happen organically. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter in the comments!
Check out the other parts of the series:
Google Keep updated to version 3.1 with a couple of new features [APK Download]
Google Keep is one of the best note taking/checklist apps available on Android. What makes it even better is the fact that it comes directly from Google, who can add new features periodically. And the app has now been updated to version 3.1 with some new features in tow.
First and foremost, users can now set recurring reminders for notes or checklists. Although the reminders feature has always existed on Google Keep, it could only be set once, but that changes today.
Google is also rolling out a new labels feature for the app, which lets you tag posts under different labels. So if you have something work related, you can tag it under work and personal notes can be filtered under the Personal label. Users can create custom labels as well. This feature has been long awaited and it’s good to know that Google is paying attention to the suggestions of the users.
If you haven’t seen the update notification yet, head over to the apk download link below to get the updated version of Keep on your Android smartphone/tablet.
Via: Android Police
Come comment on this article: Google Keep updated to version 3.1 with a couple of new features [APK Download]
Google will now let any app use its malware-blocking tools
If you’ve ever wandered onto a sketchy website and gotten a big red notice from Google, that’s all thanks to Chrome’s malware-blocking technology that aims to protect you from sites with potentially harmful materials. In order to expand its safety precautions, Google has just announced the Safe Browsing API, which lets developers incorporate the safeguarding techniques into applications. The API is meant for applications that use built-in web browsers that could potentially link to some unwanted downloads.
With the safe browsing API, developers will be able to warn users before they click on links that may lead to malware-infected pages and also prevent users from posting links to known phishing pages from a website. The API also allows for automatic checking through Google’s suspected phishing and malware software pages for quicker results.
Google explains:
In addition to our constantly-updated malware and phishing data, our unwanted software data is now publicly available for developers to integrate into their own security measures. For example, any app that wants to save its users from winding up on sites that lead to deceptive software could use our API to do precisely that.
It might be awhile before we see apps support this feature, but the precautions are now available for anyone who’d like to offer its users some more protection. If you’re a developer that would like to learn more about the new API, head here for more information.
AIVAnet 