Chance currently writes for both NewGeekGuide and 9to5Mac, in addition to 9to5Toys. He has previously written for several other online publications. He uses a Nexus 5, iPhone 5s, iPad Air, Hackintosh, and Macbook Air.
T-Mobile’s latest UnCarrier offering “Binge On” claims to allow unlimited video streaming from supported sites, including Netflix, but YouTube says that T-Mobile isn’t playing entirely fair. YouTube has not signed up to be included in T-Mobile’s Binge On service and says that the carrier is throttling its traffic.
Google introduced us to the holiday season last week with a humorous ad starring characters from The Simpsons, but now its robotics branch has given us a slightly more terrifying look at the future of this joyous time of year. Google’s Boston Dynamics robotics company has shared a video of a trio of robotic reindeer pulling a sleigh, and it’s grade A creepy.
Google Play is offering 50% off any album purchase to celebrate the end of the year. Go through this special link to activate the coupon and then the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. With so much new music having recently come out, this deal comes at a perfect time. Popular choices may include Coldplay’s new album, Adele’s new critically acclaimed album, and much more. Deal expires at midnight on January 4, 2016. If for some reason Google Play does ask you for a coupon code, just enter ALBUM2015.
Google’s self-driving car initiative has been gaining momentum over the past year, but now it looks like the company has at least one more big piece of news up its sleeve. According to a report from Yahoo Autos, Google and Ford are planning to announce a joint venture to build self-driving cars.
Flux Factory Inc. was founded back in 2010 in the Google X Labs. Shortly thereafter, the moonshot candidate was spun out into a private company. For those unfamiliar with it, Flux Factory provides collaborative design software for the architecture design and construction industry. Now, 5 years after being founded as a moonshot in Google X, Flux has raised $29 million in Series B funding.
The developers behind the popular media playback software VLC have today announced that the app is now available on Chrome OS. The team explained in a blog post that Chrome OS was one of the last operating systems on which you couldn’t run VLC, so today’s release has been a long time coming for users of the operating system.
YouTube today has shared a new video on its YouTube For Business channel that highlights the advertising opportunities that exist on the platform. The video features the popular characters from the hit TV series The Simpsons and shows Lisa using YouTube advertising to help advertise Homer’s “Mr. Plow Snow Removal” business.
Despite not selling its flagship smartphone in the United States, Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei has a hold on the third-place position in the world, behind Samsung and Apple. According to a report today from The Wall Street Journal, however, Huawei hopes to expand the availability of its flagship smartphone to the United States very soon…
Facebook video sharing has been emerging over the past year as a serious competitor to YouTube. Last year, a report showed that more and more Facebook pages were uploading videos directly to the social network itself as opposed to uploading to YouTube and sharing the link. Despite these reports, however, YouTube views are staying strong this holiday season for one of the biggest cultural trends of the year: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Google today has announced an update to its Google Play Books app on Android and iOS that brings with it a new feature called “Night Light.” The update is available now and bumps the app to version 3.7.45 on Android.
Google today has updated the Android Wear companion app to version 1.4.0.2470307.gms and while it’s a minor update, it brings back one feature that many have been missing since version 1.4 was released last month…
Google today has pushed a beefy update to its Play Movies & TV app on iOS that bumps it to version 2.0.7910 and brings several new features. The update gives the app a refreshed interface, AirPlay support, recommendations, and more.
Since the launch of Android Pay, retail giant Walmart has refused to accept the mobile payment option, saying instead that it only matters that consumers have a payment option that is widely accepted. Today, however, Walmart has announced its own mobile payment solution called Walmart Pay that is compatible with both iOS and Android.
Google has said that its goal is to reach widespread distribution of its self-driving car by 2020, but Chinese search giant Baidu might beat the Mountain View company. Today, Baidu, often referred to as the “Chinese Google” announced that its self-driving car successfully completed its first route through Beijing.
Honor today has sent out invites to CES 2016 party/event during which it will detail the “creative and smart technology that will offer superior mobile internet experiences to natives all over the world.” Honor, a sub-brand of Huawei, is responsible for devices like the Honor 5X and Honor 7.
Google today has revealed that it is expanding its Google Play Music service to two additional countries. Starting today, the service is available in South Africa and Serbia. The launch in South Africa marks the first time the streaming service has been available in Africa.
Now that the Alphabet restructuring is kicking into gear, the company today has renamed its experimental health care branch. The branch was originally named Google Life Sciences, but from here on out will be known as “Verily.” The goals of Verily are identical to Life Sciences and the only thing that’s really changing is the name.
Rumors surrounding HTC’s Android Wear smartwatch have been few and far between, but now notoriously reliable Twitter leakster Evan Blass has shared some detail. In a tweet this evening, Blass stated that HTC will launch its “One” Android Wear smartwatch this coming February.
According to a report out of The Wall Street Journal, YouTube is looking to gain streaming rights to TV shows and movies in an effort to compete more directly with services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video. YouTube executives have reportedly been meeting with Hollywood studios over recent months to discuss licensing content.
Android head Hiroshi Lockheimer has announced on Twitter this evening that Android devices will soon support the latest set of Unicode emojis. Lockheimer confirmed in his tweet that an update will begin rolling out to Nexus devices next week with the changes, while Google has also shared the fonts and tech details with other OEMs so they can update as well.
Google today has updated its Google Admin mobile app with a handful of enhancements that admins will greatly appreciate. The update makes it much easier to manage users and groups, further reducing the necessity for admins to always be near a full-fledged computer.
The first new feature is the ability to import a contact from their contact list and have all of that user’s information be auto-filled into the “Add user” form in the Admin mobile application. The information can then be edited if needed, but it makes it much easier to quickly add new users to your team.
The second major new feature is the ability to quickly change a user’s role in a group and to more easily remove them all together. Now when you tap on the member of a group, you’ll see to new options to quickly “Change Role” of a member or “Remove Member” with just a few taps.
The update to the Google Admin app on Android is rolling out now to users. The latest version is available on the Play Store now.
• Integration with your Contacts App – Create new users by importing your existing contacts directly from the App.• Better Group membership management – Quickly change a member’s role or remove them from the group.• Bug fixes – Resolved issues related to app crashes and minor UI elements.
Samsung today has announced that it is co-CEO and mobile division leader JK Shin is stepping down from the day-to-day operations of the smartphone portion of the company. Shin will be replaced by Dongjin Koh who will run the day-to-day operations of Samsung Mobile. Shin will stay, but without the little of president of mobile reports Bloomberg.
Popular messaging app WhatsApp, which has nearly one billion active users, has today started a shady method of discouraging its users from switching to one of its primary competitors, Telegram. Telegram has been gaining in popularity recently and WhatsApp clearly is threatened by that. With a silent update pushed to WhatsApp this morning, the company began blocking links to Telegram.
Google today has announced an update to the Google Maps SDK for iOS, bumping it to version 1.11. The update includes bitcode support, new events, and brings some features previously available only in the Android SDK to iOS.
Bitcode support means that Apple can optimize for specific target devices at provisioning time and is an intermediate representation of your app that is uploaded to the App Store.
Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 also includes two new events that take better take advantage of multitouch features of iOS devices. Google writes on its Geo Developers blog:
The Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 also introduces two new events: didLongPressInfoWindowOfMarker and didCloseInfoWindowOfMarker. The long press event takes advantage of iOS long-touch as another way for users to interact with Maps SDK for iOS enabled apps. The close event is particularly useful if you wish to programmatically zoom back out on the map after the user has looked at the detail associated with a particular marker.
The latest Google Maps SDK for iOS 1.11 also includes a handful of new features and bug fixes:
