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When NVIDIA reinvented its SHIELD Tablet into the SHIELD Tablet K1 about a month ago and released it on the market, it promised that although the tablet was shipping with Lollipop, an update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow was coming before the end of the year. A month has passed and it seems that NVIDIA will make good on its promise as the update looks to be in its final testing stages.
In an APK Teardown many moons ago, Cody noticed a few common strings in the mobile apps of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, that hinted at the release of templates. It took a few months, but the feature has finally gone live on all three Drive apps.
Ever since its official start in September, Android Pay has expanded bank support, payment terminal support (Square, Paypal Here), and recently started handling in-app purchases. However, Google's payment system has been bound by the USA borders so far and no user outside of the country has been able to set it up or use it. This is changing in the first half of 2016 when Android Pay should launch in the land down under otherwise known as Australia.
Google Spreadsheets has been available in a few languages for a while, but one of the app's main features, functions, has always been displayed in English regardless of the rest of the menus. That's changing on both the web and app side of Spreadsheets as support for languages in functions rolls out. The setting will follow your preferred Google account language so your experience will be consistent across various Google services.
If you're reading this, chances are you know more about the topic than I do. I am not a developer, and although I have always wanted to dabble a bit with app and game development (at least when it comes to the basics), I can almost never find a single free minute in the day for me to do that. But I'll do my best to explain what this book and deal are all about.
Whenever a service we use gets bought by another company, we're always filled with hope and anxiety over its fate. It could either be a case of growth and improvements or a slow dwindling descent into irrelevance. I'm afraid Allthecooks may start falling into the latter category if its new owners don't react swiftly to the criticism of their most loyal users.
Google+'s big web redesign started rolling out as a preview almost a month ago. Although the new site was super fast and responsive, it did shed a lot of the features that users of the social network had grown accustomed to. Ever since, Google+'s engineers have been busy adding back bits and pieces of the old site's functionality in a way that doesn't compromise on the updated design's speed and lightness.
Last month, Microsoft made a very unpopular decision to cut back on OneDrive storage for all of its users, reducing unlimited Office subscriber plans to 1TB, replacing paid 100GB and 200GB plans with 50GB ones for newcomers, and taking 10GB back of free storage on all regular user accounts. The justification given was an "abuse" of the unlimited plan by some users who had created backups of multiple computers and stored over 75TB of storage. In response, the user uproar explained that "unlimited" is, by definition, unlimited, and Microsoft should have put a limit from the first place if it didn't want users to surpass a certain capacity. Otherwise, this wasn't an abuse. And it made little sense to pretend that those hardcore 75TB uploaders were the reason everyone got their storage pinched by a measly 10GBs.
Ah Holo, how easily have you been forgotten! No sooner had Material Design been announced that we scrapped your vibrant black and blue, your grey boxes, your app tabs, and started championing white everywhere and animations. It's clear that Holo doesn't want to die, or someone at Google doesn't think Holo should be completely gone from Android, if only because it's good to see where you came from to appreciate the road you've been on. Like keeping that old photo of your acne-filled face or that baggy pair of pants that you used to wear before losing weight. It's great for reminiscing and comparing.
There's nothing more heartwarming in the middle of a snowy winter than getting together with your family or friends to build a snowman. You can always count on the experience to throw you into a time machine and make you feel childish and innocent again. And the snow fights, man the snow fights! The joy of landing a big compact snowball smack in the middle of your target! Is there anything better?
Google is busy this week updating most of its apps before the holidays and one update we were anticipating is Chrome Beta 48. The Chromium Blog had announced the update last week but we didn't see it on the Play Store until today.
Yahoo Mail received a pretty big update a couple of months ago with an interface revamp to Material Design (or Yahoo's interpretation of it), Account Key to sign in on your mobile device without having to input your password, and support for other mail providers like Outlook, Hotmail, and AOL. You may have noticed that Gmail wasn't present in that list, but that changes today.
Here's a good news / bad news kind of situation with the latest Android 6.0.1 update. In 2013, KitKat was supposed to link Bluetooth and System media controls allowing headsets, speakers, and car stereos to manage volume loudness on your phone. That never happened. Up until Android 6.0, if you were listening to audio through a Bluetooth-connected accessory, you had to control volume from your phone and the accessory separately. You could lower one, but the other would stay high, resulting in a medium volume. In order to completely lower or raise the volume, you had to do so from both, which wasn't practical at all.
AmpMe is a make-shift surround speaker system based on your devices. It turns all of your phones and tablets (and your friends' phones and tablets) into speakers for the same song, synchronizes playback across all of them, and lets the party starter choose which tracks get streamed for everyone. When it was released in October, I reviewed the app and concluded that it was good, but that it was neck-to-neck with SoundSeeder, another alternative on Android. It all depended on what you wanted: AmpMe has SoundCloud support, a better interface, and an iOS app; SoundSeeder has local music and Google Play Music playback, queue management, and more options.
A new version of YouTube's Gaming offspring has been rolling out on the Play Store with a long list of interface improvements and new features that's sure to make any gamer happy.
About a month ago, Google engineer Benson Leung went on an Amazon crusade against companies claiming to sell USB Type-A to Type-C charging and data cables. As Benson found out from his extensive reviews, most of them were selling non-compliant cables with the wrong kind of resistor that could potentially damage your Type-C devices (like the new Nexus 5X, 6P, Chromebook Pixel). The list of correct cables was small and the braided USB 3.1 USB 2.0 iOrange-E was among them. It also happened to be the cheapest back then at $14.99.A month later, the situation has changed a little bit. Benson has reviewed about 60 different cables, and there are a few more options that got his seal of approval. Some even cost less than $10, but they're usually short, they use USB 2.0, and/or they aren't braided. (I personally don't have a preference among braided or not cables, but I know the former usually cost more.) The 2M (6.6Ft) iOrange-E is still among the best options and it costs slightly less than it did before at $12.99 (black or silver versions) or $11.99 (gold). But if you want to take a couple more dollars off the price, you can use coupon code V67XXMRU to get it down on any of these to $10.99.You can use the coupon on one or multiple units of the same or differing colors. That should amount to a nice discount if you plan on upgrading several cables around your house and work or in your car and backpack to Type-C. Shipping is free for Prime members or on orders over $35.
Android 6.0 Marshmallow's text selection behavior changed, pushing the toolbar from the top of the screen to a floating one that pops up right above your finger. It also made this popup expandable and accessible to developers, some of which have since updated their apps to take advantage of this new option. First, Google Translate added a system-wide Translate button, making it possible for users to convert any word or sentence they come across into another language. Then Medium built a highlight and respond option inside the toolbar that only got triggered while using its app. Now Wikipedia's beta app has received an update to start searches from anywhere on your device.
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- Here's the full changelog, courtesy of +Luke Wroblewski:
Google is on an update spree for most of its apps, probably getting everything as ready as it could before the end of the year holidays. An update to Google+ rolled out yesterday, bringing the app up to version 6.9 and updating the look of the Notifications tab.
On the surface, Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow looked like an aesthetic fix that brought nothing but dozens of new emojis to our devices. However, the more we use it, the more we discover small fixes that have been applied to improve the overall experience, like the jumping behavior of the Share menu, the failed MMS bug, and more. Another change you might notice is that the lag when waiting for the floating toolbar to pop up is gone.
Hello? It's me, I was wondering if everyone has heard this song already or if we'd have to go over everything. They say a good update is supposed to heal apps, but JetBlue ain't done much healing...