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Yesterday brought the beginning of the rollout of a new and fresh Google+ website on both desktops and mobile browsers. The focus in Google's announcement was on the redesign, the bold colors, and the improved access to Collections and Communities, but there's a better story hiding there for everyone, especially me. (Excuse my selfishness.)
As announced yesterday, Google Photos is now ready to offer you an option to downgrade your photos and reclaim some storage space in your account. The option has gone live on https://photos.google.com/settings and will let you convert all photos you had uploaded in Original quality to High Quality (maximum 16MP). Given that the latter don't count toward your Google storage and the former do, this will allow you to save whatever space you had lost on photos while still keeping them stored in your account. Better yet, in our previous review of Google Photos, Alex had concluded that there is no detectable quality loss when switching to High Quality uploads, so you're not likely going to lose anything by activating the conversion.
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This isn't the first time we've reported about Google's deplorable policies for removing apps from the Play Store. One day you're the developer of an extremely popular app, distributing it to thousands of users, the next it's poof gone with no warning, no explanation, and no way to easily communicate with the team to understand what has gone wrong.
Nest's new Cam has been available for a few months with its 1080p video capture and better WiFi signals, but it's not the cheapest connected security cam you can get for your home. If you've been wanting one but the $199 price was a little too hard to digest, you may be happy to know that the Cam has dropped by $25 online.Both Amazon and Walmart are showing the new Nest Cam at a $175 price (minus a few pennies here and there) and that could be all the persuasion you need to grab one. Or if it was already on your Holiday shopping list, now might be a better time to jump the gun and get one. Shipping is free on Amazon and on Walmart for the slower delivery options.
Developers can't really catch a break. If they create a service that requires its own login account and password, users will clamor for an option to sign in using Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other number of oAuth logins. And if they create a service and decide not to bother with their own accounts but rely on existing oAuth options, then users will raise the demand for a standalone login as was the case with Feedly.
Living in Lebanon, I'm used to seeing limited app compatibility on the Play Store. Some apps are just not available in my country for a logical reason, others aren't because who-knows-why, and a few are limited to carriers or specific devices. I am, however, definitely not used to seeing "You don't have any devices" on every single app that I visit on the Play Store, which is what happened to me yesterday. I chalked it off as the Play Store being the Play Store, which is to say sometimes weird and slow to realize that I have at least 7 different Android devices that the app can be installed on, and moved on.
I love LEGOs. The mix of the juvenile careless joy of playing and the brainiac excitement of building new things is a satisfying feeling. But LEGOs are now way past the colored bricks that we had when I was younger. There are mechanical pieces, more complicated designs, broader possibilities, and even programmable robots.
Not all app updates are created equal and while most usually fix bugs, add features, and make things better, faster, smoother, more stable, and more enjoyable, it is not the case of the latest Android Wear app update. Google giveth and Google taketh away.
Google Play Music. Spotify. Rdio. Tidal. There is no shortage of music streaming services that not only provide an extensive music selection, but also have good if not great Android applications so you can benefit from their catalogue everywhere you go.
With the unveiling of the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE, we knew that cellular and speaker capabilities were coming to Android Wear. Yesterday, Google officially announced cellular support and explained how the feature will let you use your watch without being near a phone. However, missing from that post were details about whether or not the watch will communicate back to you using its speaker and whether other watches with speakers will also be able to do the same.
Coming across a genuinely new launcher interface and paradigm on Android is rare. Most third-party clients try to emulate the default Android launcher and add some customizations and improvements here and there. Not to undermine the power of something like Nova Launcher, but there's only so many times you can swipe left and right between homescreens or tap to open and close an app drawer before you wonder what that new launcher you installed does differently. If you seek the novelty of a new welcoming interface each time you unlock your phone, choices are somewhat more limited especially if you want a reliable and simple app, not one that has been built for the sake of difference more than usability.
Google "surprised" us all yesterday by announcing that cellular support was coming to Android Wear. Cue in Oooohs and Aaaaahs and gasps of jubilant shock. Having already heard about the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE through its teaser video back in September, it was pretty much a given that Wear watches were about to learn a new trick and cut their umbilical cord tether to their phones. But understandably, Google had to make things official just in time for the release of the LG Watch Urbane 2nd Edition LTE. (I'll call it WU2LTE from now on, ain't nobody got time for that shit!)
Raise your hand if this comes as unexpected news to you. Crickets. Alright, we know Google isn't really revealing the most secret of secrets with its newest "Cellular support comes to Android Wear" announcement, but it is clarifying a few things we didn't know about how LTE would work on our smartwatches.
Do you want to bust through doors, fire dozens of machine guns, and kill all the baddies? Then This War of Mine isn't what you're looking for. War heroes aren't just the fighters, they're also the survivors who find themselves thrown into a bleak world and have to scrape for meat, find a shelter, protect each other, and just try to get through each day unharmed and alive. That's the aspect of war that This War of Mine taps into, and it does so with surprising depth and sensibility for a "game". Our own Michael was very impressed when he reviewed it.
We usually equate the words "gaming tablet" with NVIDIA's SHIELD Tablet, but Acer wants to change the rules of that game a little. It previewed its new Predator 8 tablet in April, then announced it back at IFA, and now it's ready to start taking pre-orders in the US. The price is acceptable, if not a steal, for the specs. $300 should net you one and you can already reserve yours online with Acer, Newegg, and TigerDirect among other retailers.
You may think you have enough Bluetooth speakers, but then you find yourself in a room or a location where you don't have one handy and you start wishing you did. Maybe you placed one in the living room and bedroom, but what about the garden, kitchen, shower, or your gadget bag? Well, it's high time you filled up those silent speakerless spaces with music and podcasts and all the noise and sound that your phone can stream. Best of all? It won't cost you a lot.At $39.99, AmazonBasics has a very decent deal on its Bluetooth unit with 2 internal 3W speakers, MicroUSB charging, and 15 hours of battery life on streaming. Conveniently, it can also be connected with an AUX cable if you don't want to send your music wirelessly. There are playback buttons on the top of the unit in case your phone is a little far from reach. And it's rated at 4.3 stars with over 1400 reviews so you know it's not a dud.
Google knows a lot about you. From your name to your location, photo, email and physical addresses, places you've lived, education, and more, there's a breadth of information that you're leaving scattered across the Internet that God-knows-who can find out about you. If you want to edit and manage that information, and most importantly specify which groups of people have access to which personal details, you had to know to head into your Google+ profile, go to the About tab, and click to edit each field to see if it's private, public, or limited to your G+ circles.
LinkedIn's main app rarely gets significantly updated. It has added a few new features here and there over the past years, but it has looked the same since time immemorial. Very Holo, very grey, very Ice Cream Sandwich. You can finally bid adieu to that old design though, since version 4.0 is ready to coat your smartphone's screen with fresh animations, a cleaner design, more white, better use of space, and some nicer transitions and animations.
Samsung announced its new $99 Gear VR portable virtual reality viewer back in September and is now ready to start shipping it to consumers. Pre-orders are open in the United States on Amazon, Best Buy, and Samsung's sites, with orders ready to ship on November 20. Units will also be available for sale in Best Buy's retail locations. A week later on November 27, T-Mobile will also offer the Gear VR for sale online and in its stores, and AT&T is supposed to join the list but no specific date has been set yet.The new Gear VR is lighter and more comfortable to wear compared to the previous Innovator Edition. It also has a better touchpad for improved control. It costs the same $99 and works with Samsung's 2015 flagships: the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+, and Note 5.Along with the headset's launch, you should expect the release of several new made-for-VR games that are optimized for the Oculus platform such as Lands End from Ustwo Games, the makers of Monument Valley. Users will also have access to video content from Samsung Milk VR, Netflix (with a subscription), and Oculus Video.At $99, the Gear VR is sure more expensive than Google's Cardboard units, but it does look more spiffy and has the backing of a more specialized company in Oculus. But it's tough to deny that both offerings are really making virtual reality more affordable and attainable to everyone.Source: Samsung Tomorrow
Deep Dungeon of Doom usually costs $3.99. That's not a bad price to pay for a fun side-scrolling dungeon crawler with different protagonists — crusader, witch, and mercenary — and plenty of levels that throw you back to the good'ol times of gaming with 8-bit graphics and nostalgic sound effects. It's even much more acceptable after the game was updated to remove all in-app purchases. Now all gold has to be earned in order to buy upgrades and all revive tokens have to be won fair and square.