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Tom Maxwell

@tomaxwell

As Chrome ‘Reader Mode’ approaches launch-ready status, design changes continue

As we reported back in late June, the Chromium team – which creates a public, open-source browser that was forked to create the popular Chrome browser from Google, and who’s updates are regularly merged into Chrome – is working hard on a “Reader Mode” for the Android version of the browser. This mode would recognize articles and pages with lots of text, display a “Make page mobile-friendly” button and, when tapped, strip a page of all extraneous content, leaving just the page’s body text, title, and images. The feature is getting ever-closer to completion, so we’re taking another look at what has changed recently.


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Google’s productivity apps receive minor updates for paid and unpaid users

Google’s productivity apps have received two small updates today, one specifically for paid customers of Google Apps, the enterprise-grade version of Google’s online productivity suite for those who want to use Google products with their own domain, and the other for all users of the products. Let’s take a look.

First off, a couple products which tend to fall under the “Docs” brand have received a new UI button (pictured above) for all users which makes it clearer want kind of access you have to a document you’re viewing, and easier to request greater access. If you’re viewing a spreadsheet and have only been granted the ability to view it but not edit or add comments, for example, you’ll see a blue button which says “View only.” Clicking the downward facing arrow reveals the option to request greater access, in this case the ability to edit. Viewers with the ability to comment will see a similar button in the color green. The blue “View only” button will appear across Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings, while the “Comment only” button will only appear across Slides, Sheets, and Drawings.

The second minor change up on the block is specifically for Apps administrators, and alerts company employees to when a document they’ve shared with someone cannot be viewed by that person for one reason or another. Oftentimes to prevent sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands, Google Apps administrators will restrict their employees from sharing files with any user of Google’s apps other than those on the same domain (i.e. tom@corpemail.com). This is what it may look like if you attempt to share a document with someone outside your corporation and sharing outside your own domain is disabled:

Sharing Settings (Updated)

More information on both updates is available on the Google Apps Updates blog, here for the new Docs UI buttons, and here for the new invalid sharing settings alerts.

Google+ Photos being discontinued August 1st following standalone Photos service debut

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Au revoir, Google+ Photos. In a post to Google+, ironically enough, Google has (unsurprisingly) announced that starting on August 1st, it will be sunsetting its Google+ Photos app in favor of the recently launched Google Photos. First the Android version of the app will stop working, followed by the iOS and web apps shortly thereafter. The company says the move to axe Google+ Photos is being made in an “effort to ensure everyone has the best photos experience we can deliver.”


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Huawei sees strong first half of 2015 with 30% revenue increase, reportedly on track for 100 million shipments

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Huawei, the Chinese-based manufacturer making a name for itself in the Android smartphone market, has released a peek at its earnings results for the first half of 2015, despite being a privately-held company. The results suggest Huawei is doing quite well for a company which already ships millions of phones globally on an annual basis, although the company doesn’t just make smartphones — it also has its hand in enterprise with products in cloud computing, data storage, and more, as well as in the carrier business where it offers network technologies for telecommunications operators to easily scale their mobile broadband infrastructure.


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Google AdWords adds cross-device tracking to its display ad conversion data

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Google AdWords, the online advertising service that allows marketers to purchase advertising across multiple platforms and formats (i.e. images, video), has a neat new addition which recognizes that more people are connecting to the Internet from more devices.

Estimated Total Conversions, a larger tool which tracks ad clicks that lead to a conversion (i.e. a sale), can now track the number of display advertisement clicks that occur in a browser and end as a sale in an app, or vice versa. This also works cross-device when the converting customer has at any point logged into their Google account from both devices.
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Google’s Eddystone beacon format and Nearby API will make communication between devices easier

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Google has just announced a new beacon technology called Eddystone along with APIs that will together make it easier for devices in close proximity to communicate. Essentially, these technologies will make it as easy for devices to communicate as it is to turn to a person next to you and talk in the real world.


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Google Map Maker to be reopened for editing in early August, outsourcing much review

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You may remember the fiasco back in May wherein defacements were being discovered in Google Maps due to bad edits making their way through the approval process. Google subsequently shut down Map Maker, the tool the company used to crowdsource the improvement of its mapping products (and the same one through which these defacement edits were submitted), on May 12th to “take a pause” until “we have our moderation system back in action.” It looks like that pause on submissions will soon come to an end.


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Apparent model number for Samsung Galaxy Note 5 appears on company’s website

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We’ve been reporting on rumors surrounding Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 5, the South Korean manufacturer’s upgraded prosumer, phablet-sized smartphone, on-and-off for the past few months. Now we’re seeing something on the company’s website that leads us to believe the phone is nearing a public unveiling and release.
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Google Fiber sign-ups are live again for potential customers in Southeast Austin

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Even though Google announced in December of last year that sign-ups for its Fiber TV and Internet service were live to residents of southern and southeastern Austin, they’ve actually been opened and closed several times. Sign-ups are going live in the southeastern section yet again today, according to the official Twitter account for the company’s broadband cable and Internet subsidiary.


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Good news: Chrome may soon get simultaneous multilingual spellchecking

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Do you speak and write in more than one language – and often use them interchangeably? If so, you may know the frustration of having to constantly change the language Google Chrome uses for spellchecking. Fortunately, it looks like Chrome soon will be able to spellcheck in multiple languages simultaneously, as well as make it easy to quickly toggle spellchecking on and off for different languages.


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Google displaying product review snippets in product knowledge cards

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Search for a product on Google and you might see a Knowledge Graph card to the right of the result links containing details on the product as well as links to sites selling it and the full Google Shopping reviews page. You may now also see snippets of what people are saying regarding certain aspects of a product.

First spotted by Search Engine Land, Google seems to be pulling quotes from the product reviews that it aggregates from other websites and placing them inside Search product cards. The company gets most of these reviews from the product pages of websites selling the item – Rakuten.com Shopping and B&H Photo are two places the reviews for the above speakers come from, for example.

As Search Engine Land notes, you can click through to see all the reviews for a product, but on the full reviews page the only link provided against each review simply goes to the product page hosting the review – it doesn’t take you to that exact review on the host site.

Google is constantly adjusting its Knowledge Graph cards, most recently removing Google+ posts from the cards for popular businesses.

YouTube creating ‘Trusted Tester’ preview program for Creator Studio app

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YouTube Creator Studio is YouTube’s app through which creators can manage their accounts on the go. Now the company is creating a “Trusted Tester” program through which passionate Creator Studio users will be able to receive new updates to the app prior to their public release, and in return provide feedback and insights that will help YouTube improve the app.


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Twitch updated w/ ability to watch live streams from anywhere on your Android device

Twitch has an interesting new update out that lets anyone on Android view live streams from anywhere on their device (pictured above). The common term for this is “picture-in-picture” – Twitch calls it “Pop Out” – or displaying one thing on the whole screen and another, completely separate feed of content or video inside a smaller viewer simultaneously, still within the main screen. Users of the app have for some time had the ability to continue watching streams while browsing the rest of the app, and this is a continuation of that.


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New 2015 Moto G renders look better than real thing, but still thick with lackluster specs

Steve Hemmerstoffer, otherwise known as the infamous @OnLeaks on Twitter, has posted some new images online (translated URL) that purportedly show an updated 2015 Moto G, the budget smartphone from Motorola that comes in just above the really-budget Moto E. Hemmerstoffer is well known for having leaked accurate renders of the LG G4 months before it was unveiled by the company, and has as of late posted renders of new Samsung Note and Galaxy Tab S iterations.


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With Google’s new Gmail Postmaster Tools, senders protect themselves from hitting spam

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While email may not be perfect and many actually loathe it, it’s still the way many businesses choose to get information out – flight and accommodation receipts, job application responses, and everything else. Google says the amount of mail that you actually want to see that is accidentally sent to the spam inbox is a mere 0.05%. But the company is all about data-driven, incremental improvements, so today it’s releasing a new tool for senders of email to better ensure their messages reach your Gmail inbox.


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AWS Device Farm allows developers to test Android and Fire OS apps on real devices

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If you’ve ever tried to developed a mobile app or website you probably know how frustrating it can be to think what you made is ready to go, only to take it for a spin on a new device in a new environment and find that something is broken. It happens a lot, and Amazon wants to help alleviate some of that frustration with its new AWS Device Farm.


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Google and Legendary release Cardboard VR experiences for Warcraft, Pacific Rim, and Crimson Peak

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Legendary Pictures is debuting its new Warcraft movie today, slated for a June 2016 theatrical release at San Diego Comic-Con. The company has partnered with Google to create a new app with virtual reality experiences based on the upcoming film as well as Crimson Peak, in theaters in October, and 2013’s Pacific Rim. To make sure people give it a spin and get excited for the new films, Legendary will also be giving out 50,000 branded Google Cardboard units (pictured above) throughout the expo this week.


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Google has a new ethernet adapter for the Chromecast, costs $15 shipped

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Remember ethernet? It’s that technology that can transmit an Internet signal to devices through a cable — so long as they have an ethernet port, that is. Many devices no longer do, to the dismay of a diminishing minority. But ethernet has its benefits, like not being susceptible to reliability issues when there are two walls between your device and your router and/or modem.

Fortunately, Chromecast users are in luck, as Google is now selling an ethernet adapter for the device.
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YouTube channel card now available, lets you promote other channels in your videos

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In a recent video uploaded to the YouTube Creators channel, employees from the video platform outlined changes and new features coming soon across mobile and desktop including a new channel card. The purpose of the card is to add a heightened level of interactivity to videos by allowing creators to embed an inline link in the video player to another channel they may want to promote — maybe because they’re featured in the video, for example.

According to a tweet from YouTube, that card just went live for creators today.


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Falcon Pro 3 v1.3 brings new live streaming options, FAB behavior

Falcon Pro 3, the “ultimate” Twitter experience for Android, has received a new update that brings some changes for avid users of the real-time communication network.
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Sony Xperia Z4v to be available on Verizon starting August 13 (Update: scratch that)

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Update: Burson-Marsteller, the public relations agency of record in North America for Sony’s mobile division, has emailed us to clarify that “the copy displayed on the microsite is not accurate.” They went on to say that no official announcement regarding the launch date has been made, and that they have no information to provide at this time.

The Sony Xperia Z4v, the United States variant of the Xperia Z4, will be launching as an exclusive to Verizon on August 13th. Verizon hasn’t yet made any public announcement but a keen eye at XperiaBlog.net noticed Sony’s Z4v website now has a bold header at the top which says, “Experience the freedom to play August 13.”
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Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps for Android receive enterprise support

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Adobe recently discontinued its original Photoshop Touch app in favor of a new generation of mostly single-use applications for Android (and iOS) including Photoshop Mix, Brush CC, Shape CC, and Color CC. Now large corporate customers subscribed to Creative Cloud for enterprise can take advantage of the new apps in conjunction with the high-bandwidth features that come with their tier of service, including fast deployment of these new products to teams within their companies on a case-by-case basis and 24/7 dedicated IT support. Updates with enterprise support for the aforementioned apps hit Google Play today.

This new suite of mobile apps for Android allows users to connect to the Creative Cloud platform and save new content to be used on whatever platform they choose to use to access Adobe’s suite of products. For example, Color CC allows users to pick colors from imported images and save them to a color palette which then be accessed from desktop, tablet, or wherever else Creative Cloud apps are available. Maybe a marketing employee comes across a color in the real world that they’d like to consider using for their next campaign. Now they can rest assure that prying eyes won’t be able to steal their inspiration from them.

Along with the features mentioned above including quick deployment of new Adobe tools and services to employees and priority 24/7 support, Creative Cloud for enterprise puts more power (read: liability) in the hands of corporations by allowing them to store assets – new designs, marketing campaigns, etc – on their own servers, behind their own firewalls. Large businesses are typically slow to adopt new technologies due to stringent security requirements put in place by the same employees who are tasked with considering what new technologies to introduce to their workforces. That’s just to name a few of the additions that come with that costly tier of service, though.

The updates are available now in Google Play. For those who want the APK downloads, they can be found below.

Chromium contributors developing a ‘Sidebar API,’ could be used to resurrect Side Tabs feature

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Longtime users of Google Chrome may remember a period when it was possible to display tabs vertically, in a bar on the left-hand side of the screen, rather than at the top above the address bar. That feature (pictured above) was experimental, and the Chromium team, which creates public forks of the source code behind Google’s commercial browser, eventually gave up on the idea because it was believed to be a niche feature and “nobody stepped forward to do the work to drive the feature to completion.” Sidebars may be coming back from the dead in a different but similar form, however…


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