Google revealed on their official blog today that they have reached agreement with several retailers to start carrying Chromebooks on their retail shelves. The devices have been available at Best Buy locations and through Amazon.com. Probably the biggest outlet added to the list is Walmart, which will carry a $199 Acer version of the Chromebook in 2,800 locations throughout the U.S. » Read the rest
Unsurprisingly, infamous twitter user @evleaks has been gracious enough to list the specs of the new Motorola X phone, and its looking to be a solid mid-to-high end device. The Google-owned company has put together a phone running Android 4.2.2 Jellybean powered by 2GB of RAM, a dual-core 1.7GHz MSM8960 Pro processor, and comes with 16GB of internal storage. For those of you worried that a dual-core processor won’t satisfy your needs, it should be noted that in benchmarks the device out-performed the Samsung Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One. On the outside they’ve put a generous 10-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The display has a 1196 x 720, 720p resolution and its safe to assume it will be of the standard IPS variety. » Read the rest
The rumors for the unannounced new Nexus 7 just keep flooding in. This time, we have an FCC filing that shows the new version of our favorite 7 inch tablet will sport LTE bands for Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. And no, that doesn’t mean there will be three different models for each carrier; this is one model of Nexus 7 that has all of the radios built in for (potential) carrier hopping. Well, except for Sprint. Sorry Sprint guys.
The filing shows LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 13, and 17, which covers all of the major US carriers. All of them use some band 4, especially T-Mobile, and Verizon and AT&T use band 13 and 17 respectively. Of course, there’s still that tricky issue of not having LTE coverage, and the filing shows that this Nexus has bands for AT&T’s HSPA+ network. So, essentially, the device may be built for AT&T’s network, but will “support” other networks as well. Take it with a grain of salt, but keep your ears open.
source: Droid Life
Continuing with a batch of Google Android app updates today, like Google+ and Google Music, Google’s Gesture Search app also received a major update. The new version adds support for 40+ languages, although no list of exactly which languages are now supported is readily available. The app lets users draw letters or numbers on the screen and as they do so, the app starts searching through contacts, bookmarks, music, and other information to help the user find the information for which they are searching. With the addition of new languages, users can now write in their native language. This includes languages like Chinese and their extensive characters. Google indicates the app supports the entry of Pinyin initials to find results in traditional Chinese. Gesture Search also supports transliteration between all of the supported languages so a search written out in one language should yield results from other languages.
If you want to check out the free app, you can download it using one of the apps below. You may find it to be a useful way to conduct a device-wide search.
Just as the European Commission’s investigation into Google’s search engine wraps up, the European Union’s antitrust watchdog is reportedly investigating claims that Google used anticompetitive tactics improve Android’s market share.
According to allegations from Microsoft and Nokia, Google has been licensing their Android operating system to manufacturers below cost, making them the obvious choice for device manufacturers over competing operating systems. Google is also being accused of requesting manufacturers to cancel and/or delay the launch of devices running competing operating systems. » Read the rest
Today Google updated their Google+ app for Android and gave it some pretty cool new features. First off, notifications are now systemwide, thus when you swipe away a notification or access it, it won’t be repeated on another device that you may own. I know how annoying that can get for some. They’ve also changed the look of notifications by giving you a bell icon if there’s a new notification that needs to be attended to. Along with the update is also a revamped notification tray to match Google’s other apps. For a complete changelog, hit the break!
We are expecting to see an updated Nexus 7 in July, and we have been assuming the prices will remain the same or go down. A report from DigiTimes is telling us otherwise. They are reporting it will come in at $229, and they didn’t suggest that there will be two storage options like now. All they said was that it would be 16GB. I can’t imagine that Google would increase the price, considering it’s one of the most popular Android tablets. I also think they will continue to offer two versions, 16GB and 32GB.
So my theory is that the $229 price tag will be for the 32GB version and we will see the 16GB version for $179. Either way, I just don’t see Google increasing the price. What do you guys think?
source: DigiTimes
I gotta admit, sometimes it’s the simplest things in technology that amazes me and blows my mind. One of them is being able to print documents and other files through the cloud. I mean, how amazing is that right? Today Google released their Cloud Print app for Android devices. The task is simple and in a couple of clicks you will be able to print your desired document from your Android device. The hardest part is probably setting your printer up to make it work with this app.
* Print from any compatible Android device to any Google Cloud Print connected printer
* Share a picture or a document from apps like Gallery directly to Cloud Print
* Track the status of your print jobs
Google announced on their blog today that they recently closed a deal to acquire ‘Waze,’ a popular social media-integrated maps application. The decision to purchase the Israeli-based product development team will result in improvements for both Google Maps and Waze itself, while each app feeds off each other to get better over time.
Hit the break for the full post on Google’s blog by VP Brian McClendon. » Read the rest
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, you’re probably well-aware that Apple currently has its always-exciting WWDC event underway. While most folks out there walked away largely impressed (or for some of you, thankful that Apple has finally decided to catch up to the Android platform in some regards), there is something noteworthy that no doubt an eye-opener: Apple’s decision to roll with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine, instead of Google for the forthcoming iOS 7 update. Despite the public’s overwhelming preference for Google as a search engine (it holds a stunning 66.5% share in the U.S. according to comScore), Bing will be integrated into Siri searches instead… despite its ho-hum 17.3% share web search share. There is a minor workaround to this as Siri users also can still utilize Google for search results by asking Siri to “search Google” for a unique request. But yes friends, Apple is just about finished with Anything that can be perceived as a threat to its brand (Samsung, Apple, etc.)…
… Yet despite Bing being the default search engine when used with Siri, Apple hasn’t quite lost its senses just yet as Google will remain the default web search engine in the Safari Web browser for iOS devices. So at least all is not quite lost for the minority of Apple + Android users out there.
source: Wall Street Journal Blog