15
May
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Google Play Books Updated To Allow Uploading Your Own Documents And Books, Plus Additional Tweaks

Posted by in News

Google's Play Books service launched last year as a competent reading app, and a necessary pillar for Google Play. But one feature readers have since been asking for is the ability to incorporate their own files into the library, and now Google is adding that option to the service.

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Play Books supports PDF and EPUB files, which can be uploaded through the online library on your desktop. The feature appears to still be rolling out, so don't worry if you get a 404 right now. For comparison, Amazon's Kindle service has long supported uploaded content, but it relies on awkward email attachments.

20
Mar
books

[Updated] Google Play Books Now Live In Mexico (Google Play Books Ya Está Disponible En México)

Posted by in News

If you're in Mexico and love to read books, your potential book collection just got a lot bigger thanks to Google. Naturally, I'm talking about Google Play Books, which is now live in Mexico.

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See? Just look at all those Spanish words. There are plenty more where those came from as soon as you enable the feature on your device and start digging around for your favorite titles. There should even be a slew of books for free.

So there you go, Mexican bookworms, even more content to choose from. Go check it out.

Update: Here's the official post about it from Google Mexico.

27
Feb
1[6]

Google Updates Field Trip With New Content, Improved Notifications, And More; Play Books With Fixes For 'Over 90' Issues

Posted by in Applications, News

"Updates for everyone!" she said, as the improvements seemingly fell from the sky. Suddenly, she realized the updates weren't actually for everyone, but rather Google's Field Trip app, as well as Play Books. While she was embarrassed at her initial mistake, no one actually appeared to notice as they all stared silently at their digital devices, exploring the new goodies bestowed upon them.

That's a small excerpt from a wonderful story about a girl and a pair of Google apps, which is ironically very appropriate for today, because both of those apps just happened to be updated. Call it fate. Call it a lucky guess.

18
Dec
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Google Play Books Updated - Expanded Support For Read Aloud, Pinch To Zoom, New Note Editing Features

Posted by in Applications, News

The Google Play Books update received an update this afternoon to version 2.7.25, expanding support for several features, as well implementing new functionality for others. Here's the changelog:

What's in this version:

You can now listen to most flowing text books using the "Read aloud" feature.
You can now pinch-zoom or double-tap-zoom in all books.
All text editing features are available for notes.
Personalized recommendations are shown at the end of your library and at the end of the books.
Numerous bug fixes and performance enhancements are included.

While this isn't exactly a massive overhaul, expanded support for things like pinch-to-zoom / double-tap zoom, read aloud mode, and note editing are objective improvements to the app.

24
Sep
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Google Play Books Updated To 2.6.31 - Adds Highlighting, Translation, Dictionary, Sliding Page Turn, And More

Posted by in Applications, News

The Google Play Books app just received a substantial update, bringing the app to version 2.6.31 on compatible devices. Here's the changelog:

Added highlighting, notes, dictionary, "Places" info cards, translation, sepia mode, and sliding page-turn. Fixed crashes on launch on certain devices including HTC Wildfire.

Details:

In "Flowing Text" books, you can tap & hold to select some text and then
- Highlight
Add notes
- Translate
- See definition in dictionary info cards
- See a map and Wikipedia snippet in "Places" info cards, if the selected text is a place.

This is actually quite a large feature update, much of which you can see demonstrated in the screenshots below.