Google controls most of the search engine market in Europe, and as a result receives most ‘right to be forgotten’ requests, those things where individuals can request the de-listing of links to sensitive information about themselves that are deemed out-dated or irrelevant. But more than half of requests are denied, and of those that are appealed, most of those are too denied – which the European Union says is just fine.
It may seem like a first world problem (it is), but one of the biggest reasons why I’ve stayed using Spotify for so long is the time and effort it can take to move all my playlists and saved songs across music services. Where a content management service like WordPress allows you to export all your blog posts and take them elsewhere, since you don’t own the songs you listen to in Spotify, Google Play Music All Access, or the countless other music streaming services, they understandably don’t provide any way to export that music. As a result I justified not giving any other service a fair shake by saying I’d only switch if the alternative were at least 10x better.
I set out today to give Play Music All Access that fair shake and thought I’d share how I transferred my music over without much hassle.
The answer to all my problems (and maybe yours, too) was in the form of PyPortify, a port of a similar (free) app called Portify that was released back in 2013 but stopped working for most people at some point before the beginning of 2015. PyPortify is pretty simple to install and use, but for this post I’m just going to share how to do it on Mac OS X – it’s not too much different on Linux, and instructions for Windows, Linux, and Mac are available on the GitHub source page.
Update: I did not have Xcode installed when I completed this install, but if you do, you may need to run it and install updated components before you’ll be able to go through this tutorial.
First you’ll need to install Homebrew. It’s a popular command-line application that makes it easy to download and install applications and packages for your Mac – like if you, say for example, need the Python programming language to run an app that was written in it (like PyPortify). Open the Terminal application, paste in this command, and hit <Return>:
ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”
Once that’s finished installing and the blinking cursor returns, paste and hit <Return> on the following:
brew install python
Finally, when you’re done with both of those, paste and <Enter> this command:
pip install pyportify
This should just take a minute or two to download and install, and once it’s finished paste and <Enter> this:
pyportify
In your terminal you should get something back like this:
Now open a browser to http://localhost:3132
Don’t close your terminal window. Paste that URL as it is in your terminal – including the http and the numbers at the end – in your browser and hit <Return>. You’ll get a site which looks like this:
Click “Get started” and you’ll be asked to log into your Google account, so it can have access to your Play Music account. What you’ll want to do here is go to the My Account dashboard for your Google account and create an app password (click here for that). Once you’re done transferring all your music to All Access you can revoke this password so PyPortify doesn’t have access any longer. Next you’ll have to log into your Spotify account. If you sign into it with your Facebook account, those credentials will work just fine, and Facebook has app passwords as well that you can generate and use for PyPortify.
Finally once all of that is done, you’ll see a page like this:
Here you get to choose all the Spotify playlists you want to transfer to Google Play Music, just click the check box to the right of each playlist you want to transfer. Once you start the transfer, you’ll see a page that says it’s transferring but the “Found,” “Not Found,” and “Filtered Karaoke” numbers might not be moving up from zero. But go back to your open terminal and…
It’s working! Navigate to Google Play Music, open the left-hand drawer, scroll down to the playlists section, and you should see the playlists you chose to transfer starting to show up.
Of course not all music that’s available on Spotify may be available on Google Play Music All Access, but I’ve found that the overlap is pretty close. Also, using PyPortify is technically against the terms of service of both services, so do it at your own risk, but we haven’t heard of anything bad happening as a result of using this service. Enjoy!
If you’re anything like me, at some point during your day you’ll consciously think to yourself about what time you’d like to get up the next day. You’ll think about it, but then just forget to set an alarm on your phone before you go to sleep and end up waking at a different time than you’d like. Well, there’s a neat card in Google search that can be evoked with a simply query that may help you with this problem.
We wouldn’t blame you for not remembering HTC’s One Max, a 5.9-inch smartphone unveiled by HTC a couple of months after the standard One. It hasn’t received a hardware update since it was made available in 2013, and considering that HTC has no plan to release another One mini, we don’t expect it to see a refresher either. But anyway, the One Max surprisingly enough seems to receiving a software update that pushes it to Android 5.0.2 Lollipop.
I don’t own a Sonos speaker – I used to, and an update today to the Sonos Controller really makes me wish I still did: Spotify users now get access to a ton a great discovery features that were previously missing.
Burner, the popular app for creating throwaway phone numbers that can be used for making calls and sending text messages, has received a large update to its Android app today. The new app has three key additions, so let’s go through them.
The first major change you’ll notice upon updating the app is that it’s been completely redesigned. FABs (floating action buttons), new colors, transitions – the app now adheres to Google’s Material Design guidelines. You can see what the new app looks like above, but here’s a taste of what the app looked like before today’s update:
The next big change is the addition of unified inboxes. These will come in handy for Burner users who have more than one number in the app, placing all messages and missed calls into one inbox with color-coding so as you scroll through all your calls and messages or start replying to one, you’ll know which Burner number the message came through.
Finally, there’s now also an Android Wear app. But don’t worry, there’s no keyboard access – the app allows you to view notifications and messages, and reply using voice commands.
The company behind the app says that this update was built upon the feedback they’ve received from users, and that this is just the beginning of “a ton of new features that will be coming to Android.”
EPIX, the premium video network available on cable, satellite, and over the web, is releasing its channel for Android TV today, it announced in a press release. The channel will offer four live EPIX channel feeds as well as streaming access to thousands of movies, comedy events, and more.
Have you come across the Easter egg in Google Chrome that alleviates the frustration of your Internet going down with a fun side-scrolling game? You’re a dinosaur running and your objective is to jump and avoid hitting obstacles like rocks, ditches, and cacti, getting the highest score you can in order show off and brag to your friends (or earn their pity on you). Recently, that game has become a bit more difficult with the introduction of a new obstacle — a dinosaur that can fly.
Chrome evangelist François Beaufort posted to his Google+ account yesterday to show off what the new dinosaur, a pterodactyl, looks like in action in the game, saying it was added in a recent update to Chromium. You won’t face off against the dinosaur until your score nears 500 and, to be honest, I was having trouble reaching that score so I just used the image he shared, pictured above.
If you haven’t seen this Easter egg in Chrome before, next time you try and load a website in Chrome and get the “Unable to connect to the Internet” page, click on the dinosaur and then press either the <Up> or <Left> key on your keyboard and the game will begin. Or you can just disable the Internet connection on your computer and try to refresh a page.
The onslaught of OnePlus posts teasing out each individual facts about its upcoming phone, the OnePlus 2, continues. Today the company is responding to more concerns about overheating, as well as about the price of the OnePlus 2.
The month-long Muslim holiday of Ramadan runs from this evening, June 17th, and ends in the evening of July 17th, and Google has launched a website that takes advantage of the company’s vast offerings to provide a helpful dashboard through which to get the most out of the month.
LG really wants you to try the G4, and that’s not surprising – it’s a good phone! To try and entice you to buy one, though, they’ve extended the promotion they’re running through the 30th of this month.
If you buy a G4 and receive it anytime from now through the 30th, LG will give you a 32GB microSD card, an extra 3,000mAh removable battery, and a battery cradle so you can charge both of your batteries at the same time, all for free. All you have to do is visit this page and give LG some basic information like the IMEI/MEID of your phone and where you bought it from. The retail and carrier partners working with LG on this promo include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, U.S. Cellular, Best Buy, and Amazon.
The LG G4 doesn’t look too dissimilar from its predecessor on the outside, but on the inside it’s packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor (dual-core 1.8Ghz and a quad-core 1.44), the Adreno 418 GPU, a 3,000mAh battery, and 3GB of RAM. It also has a 5.5-inch display just like the G3, but the display is now a 2560 x 1440 IPS Quantum panel that’s very rich in color, brightness, and contrast, with an overall look that’s absolutely stunning. It’s worth checking out our review (which you can find here) for the full hands-on.
Another day, another expanded soak test of a Motorola software upgrade. This time, Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for the 1st and 2nd-generation Moto X in a bevy of countries.
In a post to its community forums, OnePlus today unveiled which CPU its much-anticipated OnePlus 2 will use – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810. The company said that the Snapdragon 810’s unmatched speed and ability to multitask while maintaining battery performance had them coming back to it over and over again during their search for the right processor. But don’t worry, the company says it will be version 2.1 of the chipset, a version that they collaborated on with Qualcomm engineers to integrate and fine-tune for the OnePlus 2’s hardware and software, and that (apparently) won’t overheat.
A couple new hardware items have just hit Google’s online store – the just-announced Nest Protect (2nd gen) and Nest Cam, and Razer’s Forge TV.
Google has today pushed an update to its Trends product, which it says is the biggest expansion to the search analysis product since 2012. The goal with this update, the company says, is to provide a “faster, deeper and more comprehensive view of our world” through real-time data on everything from the FIFA scandal to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign kick-off.
Update: Google has uploaded a video to its Android YouTube account, embedded at the bottom of this post, to formally announce the campaign, which it’s calling “And Proud,” with lots of people on Twitter using the #andproud hashtag to share their Android.
Androidify, the cutesy undercover app part of Google’s “Be together, not the same” campaign, has received a small update today — but only in terms of its download size. The update brings a lot of LGBT pride focused clothing and moves that you can add to your custom Android character. The update seems to align well with the annual San Francisco Pride Parade, held on June 28th, at which Google employees make a regular appearance. And if you create a Pride-themed character and share it to the Androidify.com website by June 27th, your character will be a part of Google’s “global online Pride parade,” being held on the same day.
Google is well known for its efforts to support diversity both inside and outside of the company through initiatives like covering the health benefits of LGBT couples and Made with Code, a program to get more young girls learning how to code. You can get the update via APKMirror right now, but if you aren’t quite familiar with manually updating and installing apps, the update to version 4.0 (from 3.0) should be rolling out via the Play Store to your device at some point over the next 24 hours.
Google traditionally participates in LGBT Pride month in a variety of ways, with one of the most notable being its redesigned search results page for several LGBT queries.
Another day, another OTA update for a Samsung tablet. Today it’s the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 on AT&T, which is receiving a bump to Lollipop (hurrah!). The update is to 5.0.2, not a more stable version like 5.1.1, but be grateful that you’re at least getting all the goodness that comes with Lollipop.
This information is courtesy of a support page on AT&T’s website, which also says that the size of the update is over 1.1GB, so you’re going to need at least that much space available to download and install it.
As per usual, updates delivered by the major carriers tend to have notoriously slow roll-outs – waiting a week or more to see it come down on your device is totally normal. To check if it’s been pulled down to your device, open the Settings app, find “About device,” then tap “System updates.”
Vessel, the monthly subscription service that provides early-access to content from some of the biggest channels on YouTube, has today released its app for Android under the “beta” moniker.
For the uninitiated, Vessel is part of a trend recently of online content creators seeking out new ways to monetize their content and make money beyond the traditional display and pre-roll video advertisements that you see around videos and other web content. Vessel charges $2.99 per month and in return gives you access to videos from popular YouTube talent including Rhett & Link and Marcus Butler, among others, several days before the videos go live on YouTube. There’s also a free version, but it doesn’t provide these exclusives and there are ads so it’s essentially the same thing as just watching them on YouTube.
The company claims to have over 130 creators uploading to the platform so far, and hopes that releasing an app for Android will expand its subscriber base greatly. Since the app is in beta, the company is hoping users will submit feedback and feature suggestions. It’s available in the Play Store, so no Google+ communities trick necessary here.
Almost immediately after Pushbullet unveiled its Portal app today for easy file transfers between desktops and smartphones, BitTorrent is out with its own similar app, called Shoot.
Well, the rumors are true: HTC has just announced that it has begun testing the “displaying of a limited number of promotions” to users of the BlinkFeed app in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Taiwan, and China. If results are good, the pilot will roll-out to more countries over time.
Regulations in the United States enacted by the USDA require chain restaurants to include the caloric content of menu items right on the menus themselves. Restaurants do their best to get around this requirement, however, by oftentimes printing the calorie information in small, faint type that’s hard to see or even notice. Fortunately, Google is here to help, putting caloric and other nutritional information only as far away as an “OK Google” command.
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India is a large, fast-developing country where cash is still the predominant payment method for everything from paying for cabs to refilling on smartphone data. Large multibillion dollar upstarts like Uber arrive in the country and find that it’s only once they add cash payment that their businesses really take off, and so it’s no surprise that Google is jumping into the fold through the arrival of Google Play prepaid cards in India.
These gift cards should start showing up in select Vijay Sales and Spice Hotspot stores in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata & Jaipur. They will be available in denominations of INR 500 (US$7), INR 1000 (US$15) and INR 1500 (US$23), and can be paid for with any payment method these stores allow.
Redeeming the cards is as simple as visiting this page and inputting the redemption code on the back of the card. It’s believed that direct carrier billing might come to India sometime soon, but there’s no word from Google on that just yet.
We recently reported that the launch of Huawei’s first smartwatch, simply called Huawei Watch, was expected to be delayed until September or October in China and perhaps abroad as well. A new story out from the WSJ speaking with Yang Yong of Huawei, however, has the launch in China pushed back as far as early 2016. The smartwatch is still expected to launch in the US and Europe in the coming months.
Most of us have at least once in our lives driven to a place or business or to discover upon arrival that it’s closed. It sucks, and Google has decided to address this in version 9.10.1 of Maps for Android.
In addition to now showing you car rental reservations alongside your flights and hotels, the new version will pull data from Google’s vast places database to determine whether or not the place you’re traveling to will be closing around the time you arrive. As you can see in the image above, the place I input closes at 5:30PM and my approximate arrival time is 5:07PM, so Maps gave me a warning at the beginning of navigation so I won’t arrive too surprised. The update should be arriving for most users now through the Play Store.
