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'Androids' by Chet Haase is on sale now, and you can get started reading for free
Available from both Google Play and Amazon Kindle
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The history of Android has been told in many small parts; but to get the whole story you would have to scour thousands of blog posts, hundreds of podcasts, and the minds of a few dozen people that would probably ask you to leave them be — until now, that is. Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System is set to release tomorrow, bearing the tale of how the world's most widely used operating system came into existence. If you're curious about the backstory of the OS that you spend half your day staring at when you should really be working, you can buy the book now on Google Play and Amazon Kindle.Chet Haase, the author of Androids, is perhaps best known for delivering witty banter while hosting Google I/O fireside chats and developer sessions, or even educating people about bugs wherever they will let him. But he is also a longtime developer at Google with over a decade on the Android, working primarily on the UI Toolkit team; and he had a lot to do with enabling the smooth animations and visual effects of Material Design.[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/chethaase/status/1424113349160144896[/EMBED_TWITTER]As Chet pointed out shortly after the original announcement last weekend, this book is meant for everybody, not just engineers. There won't be a lot of technical jargon, but instead it's filled with the events, experiences, decisions, and anecdotes of the people behind the green bot. And fear not, it has been confirmed on no uncertain terms, there will be puns.The ebook is now available for $9.99 USD from either Amazon or Google Play Books. If you would like to preview part of the book before purchase, samples are available from both stores. Amazon provides the first 4 chapters, while Google Play provides the first 7 chapters (about 20% of the total book).
Spotify is kicking its new audiobook section off with nine classics
They're free to listen to for all Spotify users
Spotify has decided to step into the world of audiobooks, and it's starting things off with nine books you may have heard of narrated by some names you may recognize. If you've been running out of music and podcasts to listen to, it might not be a bad idea to get a better grasp of some literary classics.
Google Play Books doesn't come up much in the news these days, but the service is still kicking, even offering the occasional hot deal every now and then. As of today, Play Books is 10 years old, marking a decade of bringing reading (and listening) pleasure to millions.
The Play Store is offering nearly 30 kids' books for free
There's something for every age range, though the deals are only valid in the US and Canada
I'm not a parent, but I can imagine that many are getting driven insane by their kids now that everyone's stuck at home. If you're looking for a cost-effective way to potentially calm them down, the Google Play Store is currently offering almost 30 books, with some reading for a variety of age groups.
Sesame Street eBooks are free on Amazon, Google Play, and other platforms
Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?
Many companies and organizations are working to make movies, TV shows, books, and other entertainment free (or cheaper, at least) for folks stuck at home during the coronavirus outbreak. Sling TV has free movies and TV shows, 24 Hour Fitness made some of its premium features free for everyone, and now the makers of Sesame Street have made over 100 eBooks free on various platforms.Sesame Workshop announced yesterday that "over 110" free Sesame Street eBooks are now available on all major platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook, Google Play, and Kobo.
Google has steadily been bringing its newest Material Theme to an ever-expanding list of products. After hitting the more popular apps, like the Play Store and the productivity suite in Drive, Google has moved on to bringing its less popular offerings into the fold. First, Blogger received a surprise coat of Material Design paint, and now the 15-year-old book preservation project, Google Books, is getting the same treatment.
Google Play Books adopted the latest iteration of the Google Material theme back in January, doing away with the colorful version that exemplified the original Material Design. This update doesn't have quite as many striking changes, but it does bring functional improvements and a little more customizability to some of the features. Most of the additions are focused on Audiobooks, but you'll also find new icons for the app shortcuts.
It was only a few weeks ago that we spotted a small change in the Play Store's tab layout that would completely separate apps and games. The modification we are seeing today takes a page out of that book, but feels more like a regression than an improvement.
In a world that bombards us with things to do, it can be tough to stay on top of everything we think is worth checking out. Movies we want to see, music to listen to, books to read, restaurants to try, and places to go, there's just so much to do and almost no central way to keep track of all of this. You can use a simple list app, like Google Keep for example, but where's the fun in that? Now there's a new way to stay on top of your bucket list: Soon.
Every week, I examine somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred app updates while looking for changes. The most interesting things turn into APK Teardowns or Download posts. Many of the remaining updates are unremarkable, amounting to a few bug fixes, routine updates to libraries, or even just pixel-level adjustments to layouts and images. However, there are usually a few updates that land somewhere in between. I don't want to spam readers with dozens of short posts, but I hate to ignore things that people might want to know about, so I'm going to wrap up the leftovers for a little weekend reading and call it Update Notes.
That spookiest of days, Halloween, is nearly upon us, and to celebrate, Google's running sales on all the creepy media you could possibly want. Right now, you can score some solid discounts on seasonally appropriate movies, books, and TV shows on Google Play.
Listening to any spoken format, whether it's podcasts or audiobooks, is bound to come with some pauses. If you're bothered by that sort of thing and want to keep things running as smoothly as possible, the latest Play Books update will help you with that. There's a new option that will do some basic audio magic to detect longer moments of silence and cut them down so you won't have to sit through any long gaps in sound.
An Amazon Prime membership comes with a slew of benefits. Most people are familiar with the free two-day shipping, Prime Video, and Prime Photos, but the company also offers other services like free Twitch Prime, discounts at Whole Foods, and more. For the more avid readers out there, there's the $9.99/month Kindle Unlimited plan, but that's just a waste of money for most people. But Amazon is currently offering 20 books to regular Prime members to borrow for absolutely free via Prime Reading, and there are some popular titles in there.Of these 20 books, highlights include Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Mark Edwards' Follow You Home, and Douglas Richards' Mind's Eye. The selection is quite diverse, and chances are that you'll find something that catches your eye.To take advantage of this free selection, just hit the source link below and select "Read for Free." Again, you will need a Prime membership for this, and it looks like you have to be the primary account holder as well. Only 10 books can be borrowed at a time, but there's no time constraint on when you have to "return" the books. Think of it simply as a 10-book limit to your library.
Before Amazon became the go-to place to buy literally anything you want, the company made a name for itself largely by selling physical books. Now, the online retail giant has a neat new service in keeping with its history: Prime Book Box is a subscription plan that will send you a box of either two or four child-friendly books every one, two, or three months for $22.99 per box—at a savings of "up to 35% off List Price."Shoppers can choose the age range the child they're shopping for is in; the box for the youngest range, baby to two years, comes with four board books per box. The others—three to five, six to eight, and nine to 12—all come with two hardcover books. Books are curated for the age ranges by Amazon, and parents can choose specific books for each box from a list or opt for random selections.[EMBED_YT]https://youtu.be/nCBomyfIQDM[/EMBED_YT]Amazon bills Prime Book Box as "The love of reading, delivered." Plans don't require a commitment—except, of course, an Amazon Prime subscription—and you can skip a scheduled box or cancel your subscription whenever you want.Three cheers for encouraging kids to read.Source: Amazon
April 23rd is World Book Day, and Google is commemorating the occasion with discounts on multiple books on Google Play. The discounts apply not only to regular ebooks, which have existed on Google Play for quite some time, but to audiobooks as well, which were launched just earlier this year.
Play Books v4 prepares to launch audiobooks with support for casting and Android Auto [APK Teardown]
Play Books just hit version 4 yesterday, but on the surface it looks like very little has changed. There are a couple of relatively small tweaks here and there, but it wouldn't appear to deserve a big version jump. However, this is the version that will launch audiobook support. A teardown shows that there's a ton of new functionality hiding below the surface and it's all just waiting for Google to flip the switch.
Audiobooks are great, allowing busier people to listen to books while on the go. Google seems to sympathize with this notion, having just added new options for audiobooks in Google Search. This news comes not long after we discovered mentions of audiobooks in the Play Store v8.4 APK teardown.
The discount madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is almost upon us, so it's probably a good time to take a look at what Google Play is offering. There are offers in every category on the Play Store, including movies, apps, games, music, TV, and books. These deals will be available through the end of Monday 27th November in most territories.
The Kindle app has been on Android since the early days, and it's been some time since Amazon gave it a fresh coat of paint. The busted old interface is on the way out today. A new Kindle app is rolling out with an updated look and some new features. Although, not everyone is happy with the new app.
Outside of Samsung's yearly announcement of a new Galaxy Note, it's rare to see anything interesting happening with a stylus. However, the latest update to Google Play Books comes with some new behavior that makes a stylus much more useful with things like college textbooks and other reference material. Now when you drag a stylus over some text, it instantly switches into selection mode and pops up the action menu as soon as the selection is done.