The Google Play Music app has received a bit of a refresh this morning. Download it and you’ll get KitKat SD card support, which gives offline music capability.
Not only that, but there’s the ability to shuffle songs in the “All Access” feature and Google have made it easy to share links of songs, artists and albums to those special online friends.
Grab it here or dive into your Google Play link now.
Le journal « The Information » sis en Amérique indique que le géant de Mountain View compte s’investir à nouveau dans le marché de la télévision connectée, et compterait libérer son nouveau produit, qui devrait porter le nom de Google Nexus TV, dès la première moitié de l’année prochaine. L’information viendrait d’une source anonyme travaillant chez Google, la source ira même jusqu’à dire qu’elle a vu l’appareil en question. Apparemment, Google veut se frayer une place dans le grand combat que se livrent les fournisseurs d’accès internet avec leurs box.
D’après le journal, la Nexus TV ne sera pas réellement une télévision dans le sens où il ne pourra pas se connecter aux chaines numériques comme le font les TV HD du moment, mais ce sera plutôt une box qui pourra se connecter à votre TV HD, un peu comme les différentes box TV qui existent déjà sur le marché. En réalité, le journal « The Information » précise que la box Nexus TV se concentrera sur la bibliothèque web de Google qui est largement riche en médias, pour fournir le contenu qui sera sollicité par l’utilisateur. De ce fait, ce nouvel appareil ne fonctionnera pas comme le Google TV annoncé autrefois, mais nous n’écartons pas la possibilité d’y retrouver ses quelques fonctionnalités.
Ainsi, nous pouvons nous attendre à voir les contenus fournis par Google via ses services Google Movies & TV, Google Music, YouTube et bien d’autres encore. Le tout tournant sous Android 4.4 KitKa au cas où l’appareil serait bel et bien un Nexus.
Pour terminer, nous avons récemment entendu parler d’un partenariat de Google avec LG quant à la construction de ce nouveau produit. Bien évidemment, rien n’est moins sûr jusqu’à présent, et on peut toujours envisager d’autres constructeurs comme Samsung, ou encore Logitech pour donner vie à ce futur appareil. En tout cas, le journal indique que le terminal ne sera pas disponible avant la première moitié de l’année 2014, sans doute vers le mois de mai ou avril lors du Google I/O. Nous en saurons sans doute plus dans un avenir proche.
Via
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Yes, you read correctly! Google has finally launched its Google Play Music app for Apple's iOS!
For any iPhone user who does not know it, Google has recently launched its "access service" that allows subscribers to listen to music in a manner similar to Spotify, Deezer, but the free version is similar to Apple's iTunes service of party.
The free option allows you to upload up to 20,000 songs to their servers a current in the device or PC browser. Equivalent service from Apple's £21.99 per year!
The "All Access" option is £9.99 per year and allows access to the huge collection of Google again from the application or from your device browser PC. The "Access" option is also available as a watch this 30-day free trial version.
Unfortunately at this point there is an iPad app, but you can use the application iPhone/iPod touch in 2 x mode.
Get the official app for your iOS device from the App Store
In what has possibly been the most drawn out build up to a phone being announced the LG made Google Nexus 5 has finally been announced.
Spec wise it’s pretty much as we expected. The full spec is as follows.
The Nexus 5 seems like it’s going to be the phone to own, for weeks people have been holding off getting one phone or another. Now the wait is over, you can finally decide just head over to the Play Store it is available from £299 for the 16GB and £339 for the 32GB.
Just in time for Halloween, we have two new treats for Android fans. First, we’re excited to unwrap our latest platform release, KitKat, which delivers a smarter, more immersive Android experience to even more people. And second, we’re introducing Nexus 5—a new Nexus phone developed with LG.
The first thing you’ll notice about KitKat is we’ve made the experience much more engaging: the book you’re reading, the game you’re playing, or the movie you’re watching—now all of these take center stage with the new immersive mode, which automatically hides everything except what you really want to see.
Bringing more Google smarts to Android
Behind the polish on the screen is the power under the hood. Take the Phone app, which for most people hasn’t really changed since the days of flip phones. Now, we’re making calling easier than ever, by helping you search across your contacts, nearby places, or even Google Apps accounts (like your company’s directory), directly from within the app. And with the new Hangouts app, all of your SMS and MMS messages are together in the same place, alongside your other conversations and video calls, so you’ll never miss a message no matter how your friends send it. This is just a small taste of KitKat—learn more on our site.
Google has always focused on helping users get immediate access to the information they need, and we want to bring this same convenience and power to users on Android. With the new Nexus 5 launcher, Google smarts are deeply integrated into the phone you carry around with you, so getting to the information you need is simple, easy and fast. Swipe once from the home screen to get Google Now literally at your fingertips. Put Google to work for you by saying “OK, Google” to launch voice search, send a text, get directions or even play a song you want to hear. And in the coming weeks, we’re enhancing Now with important new card types that bring you information about contextual topics that interest you such as updates from a favorite website or blog.
Reaching the next 1 billion users
Building a platform that makes mobile phones accessible for everyone has always been at the heart of Android. Until now, some lower-end Android phones couldn’t benefit from more recent Android releases due to memory constraints. With KitKat, we’ve slimmed down Android’s memory footprint by doing things like removing unnecessary background services and reducing the memory consumption of features that you use all the time. We did this not only within Android but across Google services like Chrome and YouTube. RAM (or memory) is one of the most expensive parts of a phone, and now Android can run comfortably on the 512MB of RAM devices that are popular in much of the world, bringing the latest goodies in Android 4.4 within reach for the next billion smartphone users.
Introducing Nexus 5
Along with our sweet naming tradition, we also introduce a new device with each platform release to showcase the latest Android innovations. For KitKat, we partnered with LG to develop Nexus 5 — the slimmest and fastest Nexus phone ever made. Its design is simple and refined to showcase the 5” Full HD display. Nexus 5 also keeps you connected at blazing speeds with 4G/LTE and ultra fast wifi. The advanced new lens on Nexus 5 captures more light for brighter night and sharper action shots. And with optical image stabilization, you no longer have to worry about shaky hands and blurry pictures. A new HDR+ mode automatically snaps a rapid burst of photos and combines them to give you the best possible single shot. Learn more on our site.
Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks.
How’s that for a treat?
It’s daft really. When you think of the infrastructure that Google have at their disposal, to say that servers are down seems a bit bonkers.
In reality there was some sort of issue with a section of the Google system, probably due to the Skynet being enabled. Don’t worry though, I know where John Connor lives, and he’s not that far from Batman either, so we’re sorted.
Sorry, too early? Have I gone a bit overboard trying to pad this article out? Probably, yes. ;)
Anyway, don’t worry, everything is fine again now. The Google engineer called us earlier and said, ” I’ll be back ….. ”
Thanks to Michael Beatty for the tip.
I have to admit that I am one of the few people that did not play the original Plants vs Zombies however apparently Plants vs Zombies 2 is now available on the Google Play store.
The follow up to the hit game from Electronic Arts “brings the fun” to tablets as well as mobile phones and features more zombies, more plants and more of just about everything else.
The Play store description is as follows:
Description
The zombies are coming… back. It’s about time! The sequel to the hit action-strategy adventure brings the fun to tablets and touchscreens. Join Crazy Dave on a crazy adventure where you’ll meet, greet and defeat legions of zombies from the dawn of time to the end of days. Amass an army of powerful new plants, supercharge them with Plant Food and power up your defenses with amazing new ways to protect your brain. Battle zombies from all worlds in the front yard Piñata Party mini-game to win big prizes. And that’s just the beginning! The future holds many mysteries… also zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.
Game Features
• Meet powerful new plants that will defend your lawn through time
• Go toe-to-missing-toe with dozens of new zombies
• Supercharge your floral friends with healthy doses of Plant Food
• Fire up amazing Finger Powers to pinch, flick and zap zombies
• Defeat brain-teasing challenges that will test your zombie-zapping skills
• Take on zombies from all worlds in the Piñata Party mini-game and win prizes
• Gather keys to play valuable side missions
• Collect coins to purchase potent power-ups
• Earn stars to take you to new worlds
• Connect to Game Services to unlock achievements and compete against friends on the leaderboards
• Look out! Zombie chickens!
Language Support: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian PortugueseRequirements:
• Requires Android 2.3 (Gingerbread); ARMv7 1.0 Ghz or higher; 1 GB of RAM
• Features may vary by mobile device
Now as I said I didn’t play the original and I can’t see a lot to make me want to download this version but if this is the type of game that you play then Plants vs Zombies 2 can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store.
The updates just keep on coming from Google. Along with the Quickoffice update, Google Maps is now undergoing a staged rollout, this time to version 7.3
The update contains a few UI changes and several under the hood fixes.
Firstly, the notification window now has more detail than previously, the detail includes time to destination, distance to destination and estimated arrival time.
Secondly, the look of the cards has been updated with slight UI changes bringing less bloated cards with the text being condensed from 4 lines into 2.
Other changes are based around the UI on the review system and around the addition of Google Analytics for internal usage reporting.
As ever with Google apps, the rollout is a staged one so if you haven’t received it yet, don’t panic, it’s on it’s way!
It is a continual frustration for those outside of the United States that Google tend to release all of their services for the US first, sometimes leaving the rest of the world to fend for themselves or wait a ridiculously long time for said service to become available in the users country.
Chromecast, Google Play Music, Magazines, Books and Television are all on the list of goodies that were available in the US but not anywhere else at launch and in some cases many are still not and fall under the heading of “Coming soon…..”
Well, coming soon has now arrived for 7 more countries when Google Play Music All Access is concerned.
The following countries now benefit from Google’s music streaming service that allows access to its entire library to play on demand and even make available offline.
Czech RepublicFinlandHungaryLiechtensteinNetherlandsRussiaSwitzerlandSo, if you are in one of the countries listed above, open up Play Music and stream away till your heart is content. You won’t be disappointed!
In a move that we predicted last week, Google have made their Quickoffice suite off apps free for all users. Apple’s decision to provide iWork for free on new iOS devices has more than like tipped Google’s hand. Quickoffice was previously free for premium Google Apps users, but sold for $19.99 on iOS and Android.
Quickoffice also integrates with Google Drive, allowing quick, easy editing of Spreadsheets, and Documents. As an additional bonus, Google are also offering 10GB of free Google Drive storage for two years to anyone who signs in to the app on Android or iOS by 26 September.
Our very own Simon isn’t the biggest fan of Quickoffice, but it’s still hard to argue that this is anything other than a win for users. This is why we need competition in the mobile space.
Source: Google Drive Blog
