Chrome 40 for Android arrives on the stable channel
Chrome 40 is now rolling out for Android, and while the milestone number might make it seem like this is a big update, it’s actually relatively minor. The biggest changes mentioned in the Chrome blog are the new updated page info and content settings UI.
Surely Chrome 40 has more going on than that right? While there aren’t many front-facing changes, the good news is that a slew of bug fixes and performance improvements are baked in. For those wanting to know about the specific bugs squashed, a partial list of the changes found in the build can be seen in the Git log.
As is customary with all Google updates these days, today’s update may actually take several days or even weeks to reach everyone. For those that don’t like waiting, you can download the APK through Gappsearly. For those that downloaded, are you experiencing any noticeable improvements when it comes to speed, stability and overall performance? If so, tell us about the experience in the comments below.
Google will soon offer wireless service through Sprint and T-Mobile
It has often been rumored that Google will eventually get into the wireless mobile game, and it looks like that dream will come true. As part of something codenamed Nova, Google won’t be starting their own service, but will instead opt to be an MVNO for Sprint and T-Mobile.
If you’re not familiar with what an MVNO is, it’s a mobile virtual network operator, or basically a re-seller of another carrier’s service. For example, Ting is a Sprint MVNO and Straight Talk is the same for both T-Mobile and AT&T. You can now add Google to the mix.
According to The Information, Google wants to not only offer lower prices, but also improve the user experience. They are also developing mobile apps to go along with the service.
Google has not commented, but the report indicates that they have been working on this project since the fall of last year, and the service could launch sometime this year.
Does this excite you? Neither Sprint nor T-Mobile excites me since their coverages are dismal in my area, but I am intrigued to see Google get into the game.
source: The Information
via: The Next Web
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Google preparing to become a MVNO carrier as part of Project Nova – report
Google is getting ready to launch its own MVNO wireless service, according to a report by The Information.
Headed by longtime Google executive Nick Fox, the project, known as Nova, is said to have been in testing since at least last fall. Google will buy wireless access – voice and data — wholesale from T-Mobile and Sprint and sell it to its customers. This model, known as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), is widely employed in the US and worldwide – Republic Wireless and Tracfone are some well-known examples of MVN operators.
According to The Information, which cites three people familiar with the matter, Google sees Project Nova as an experiment and as a tool for forcing wireless carriers to offer better services or lower prices. Google will sell voice and data plans through an online store, probably the Play Store. At one point, the company considered bundling wireless plans with its Nexus smartphone, though it’s not clear what came of that plan. The project is likely to launch sometime this year, says the report.
It’s not the first time we’re hearing about Google’s ambition to become a MVN operator, in order to disrupt the telecom incumbents, which Google’s leadership perceives as slow to innovate and determined to preserve the status quo. The Mountain View company is doing something similar with Fiber, and, in the handful of markets where Fiber rolled out so far, competing providers did step up their offerings. It remains to be seen whether Google will manage to meaningfully disrupt the wireless industry.
What do you think of having Google as your carrier?
Google updates Docs, Sheets and Slides apps on Android
It’s Wednesday and you know what that means – Google app updates. This week’s update list includes Sheets, Docs and Sides. Google is updating both the Android and iOS versions of the app.
Docs is getting a real time spell checking feature which will finally let you edit and create documents on the fly without worrying about errors.
The Slides update brings the ability to group shapes within the presentation, letting you do a lot more right with your mobile device.
Finally, the Sheets update can now hide rows and columns in a spreadsheet. All three apps are also getting two step authentication, which is non-existent in the current version of these apps. You can also use pinch to zoom gesture on these apps to magnify content.
Further, Google is now helping the visually impaired with support for Android’s Voice Over feature. All three updates are rolling out as we speak, but might take some time to arrive on all devices. However, if you’re already seeing the update, make sure you let us know what you think.
Source: Google
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When did Apple become the boring one?
In less than a decade, Apple completely changed the world of personal computing, and the music industry in the process. First came the iPod and the iTunes Store; then the iPhone and App Store; and then the iPad. The Apple of the 2000s was an exciting company to follow. It’s just not that company anymore. Instead, it’s spent the past few years slowly improving its admittedly great cash cows, iterating and iterating and iterating. It’s made cheaper iPhones, bigger iPhones and even gave in and made a phablet. It’s made cheaper iPads, smaller iPads and is apparently planning a bigger iPad. It’s made cheaper MacBooks, smaller MacBooks… you get the point. Its latest project, the Apple Watch, sure looks like a smartwatch, and it might be very successful, but is it doing anything totally unique? Is it really exciting? No.
The 2000s Microsoft, on the other hand, spent its years trying to fix Vista, Internet Explorer and Windows Mobile — playing catch-up. Apart from the success of the Xbox 360, it had a pretty torrid time, even if it was never in trouble financially. But let’s briefly summarize what Microsoft, energized by the appointment of Satya Nadella as CEO almost a year ago, just showed us. An operating system that runs universal apps across PC, tablet, phone and Xbox One. Streaming games from your home console to any Windows PC or tablet. A voice assistant for your PC that seems like a prequel to Scarlett Johansson’s AI in Her. HoloLens. I mean, HoloLens! Microsoft is promising to make the distant dream of functional AR a reality very soon. It even held people’s attention while showing off a new enterprise PC.
Google, the final company in the fabled “big three,” has always been the upstart. It’s fresh, exciting and full of ideas. Some of them are good, and completely change their industry; some of them are bad, and fizzle out. But they’re always something. Project Ara”s modular smartphones are truly exciting, and progressing well; Project Loon — the idea of beaming internet down to developing or rural areas from balloons in the stratosphere — is pretty incredible; and sure, Glass might be leaving us temporarily, but with the creator of the Nest onboard and Google’s massive investment in augmented reality company Magic Leap, you can be certain it’ll be back. So what about Apple?
Apple is the mid-2000s Microsoft. Its revenues are as healthy as ever, but it’s become a company that seems to make things just because it has to, that doesn’t take risks, that plays catch-up. The closest it’s come to a really exciting announcement in recent years was the launch of a niche pro desktop PC.
Microsoft just showed the world some crazy exciting stuff. Holographic computing might not be all it’s chalked up to be. HoloLens might never take off. Maybe people don’t want to talk to their computers. We’ll see. But Microsoft is trying to excite, or, to borrow an Apple buzzword, “delight” us all. If you’re a huge tech company, you should be trying to do that every day. Apple might be trying, but it’s not succeeding.
Google to bring Android tablets with Google for Education to UK schools
Google is hard at work pushing Google for Education, and their next step is to offer Android tablets preloaded with Education services to schools in the UK. These tablets are customized for the curriculum used in the UK school system and offer great ways to manage time and get students more involved.
Schools have an option of which tablets they want to buy, some of which include the Nexus 7 and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 4. The tablets seamlessly link together for classrooms and have access to Google’s Education app store and are preloaded with Google’s work apps like Drive, Docs, and Sheets.
Early results from schools that were piloting these tablets have been mostly positive, so these services are clearly doing what Google set out to achieve.
source: Google for Education
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Daily Roundup: Windows 10, weak passwords, SpaceX and more!
Microsoft will unveil Windows 10 to the masses tomorrow, giving us a closer look at what the folks in Redmond have been working on. Meanwhile, everyone on the internet is still using weak passwords like “123456” and Google decided to drop some serious money on SpaceX. Get all the details on these stories and more in today’s daily roundup.
What to expect from Microsoft’s next Windows 10 event
Tomorrow, Microsoft will give us a closer look at its latest operating system, Windows 10. What sorts of things do they have in store? Cortana, mobile optimizations and gaming improvements, just to name a few. We take a look at all the things you can expect.
Please don’t use these passwords. Sincerely, the Internet
If one of your passwords is on this list of the most popular passwords of 2014, it’s probably time for you to change things up. The most popular passphrase people used in 2014? “123456.” Well, at least it’s not “password” (that’s the second most used entry).
SpaceX is now a $10 billion company thanks to Google
SpaceX just secured $1billion in funding thanks to investments by Google and Fidelity, who will collectively own 10 percent of Elon Musk’s company. Both Google and Elon Musk are interested in using satellites to make the internet accessible around the world.
YouTube’s first Super Bowl halftime show may beat what’s on your TV
The Super Bowl halftime show is usually the perfect time to restock the fridge, stretch your legs and prepare yourself for two more quarters of exciting football action. This year, there might be a reason to stick around, as YouTube will host its first-ever halftime show.
The NSA knew North Korea hacked Sony because it hacked North Korea first
The US government sounds pretty confident when they say North Korea was responsible for the Sony Pictures hack. How do they know for sure? They inserted backdoor software into North Korea’s computer systems years ago.
Troubled Steve Jobs movie starts filming at last
Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography has finally started filming. CNET caught a glimpse of a film crew preparing to shoot in Jobs’ childhood home.
‘Borderlands’ on PS4 and Xbox One comes in a $399 edition with a robot
If you have $399 burning a hole in your pocket, consider this Borderlands: Claptrap-in-a-Box Edition for your Playstation 4 or Xbox One, which includes an actual robot.
Google updates app title guidelines for clarification on naming third-party apps
Google has just updated their app title guidelines to help developers choose better, more disconnected titles for third-party applications. The guidelines are put in place to help third-party app developers separate themselves from potentially tricking a user into thinking the developer is directly associated with a brand.
Google has long practiced this policy when it came to 3rd party app’s using its own branding, or the Android branding more specifically. For instance, Google would rather have an app titled Media Player for Android, as opposed to Android Media Player. The latter suggests that the music player is associated with Android, and the former suggests that the music player is simply an app on the Android platform. With their latest guideline update, they not only clarify the practice of naming conventions, they now expand it to cover other services and brands such as social networks and more.
This means that Twitter clients can’t be called “Twitter Easy Connect” (made up example), and instead would have to be Easy Connect for Twitter. This also means stuff like Reddit Sync could come under fire under this new guideline update. In the Android Developer portal’s Policy Guidelines & Practices section, the new changes will appear in the Keyword Spam section.
This is basically something for Google to refer back to if a developer just so happens to mis-title their application. In short, this should help developers catch their mistakes early on, eliminating the need to change their app name further down the road.
Chrome for iOS plays nicely with Mac browsers, big iPhones
At long last, Google has overhauled its Chrome browser for iOS to fit into the company’s Material Design language — and thankfully, it’s a lot more than a fresh coat of paint. The newly released Chrome 40 gives you the expected bright colors, flat surfaces and fancy animations of Google’s latest interface philosophy, but its big deal is rich support for iOS 8. The app is now fully compatible with larger iPhones, and it’ll hand off web links to the preferred browser on your Mac (if you’re running OS X Yosemite, that is). If you’re a fan of Chrome but wish that it fit better into Apple’s world, you’ll want to swing by the App Store for the update.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile, Google
Via: 9to5Mac
Source: App Store, Chrome Releases
Google wants the US’ wireless spectrum for balloon-based internet
Google’s internet-by-air effort, Project Loon, isn’t necessarily limited to countries where data coverage is frequently spotty; it might be headed to the US, too. The search firm recently sent a letter to the FCC suggesting that potentially available high-frequency spectrum (above 24GHz) should be handy for providing “broadband access via airborne platforms” like balloons and drones, not just on-the-ground networking. In other words, it’s open to deploying Project Loon stateside beyond limited test runs.
This doesn’t amount to a launch roadmap, and Google isn’t commenting on the letter. However, the idea is technically feasible. Improvements to wireless technology have made ultra-wideband wireless useful for networking where it was previously restricted to very short-range uses, like PC peripherals. The FCC will still have to parcel out these frequencies before companies like Google can even consider using them. All the same, the letter hints at a future where rural Americans don’t have to lean on expensive satellite connections (or get lucky with cable, DSL and fiber rollouts) to receive high-speed internet access.
Filed under: Networking, Internet, Google
Via: Wall Street Journal
Source: FCC (PDF)
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