One of the most interesting announcements made today at Apple’s Annual WWDC was the release of the Apple HomePod, Apple’s entry into the home assistant arms race. A straight up challenger to the champ, Amazon Echo and the runner-up, Google Home, Apple’s HomePod takes Siri out of your iPhone and places her squarely, for better… Read More
I love to doodle, but my drawings don’t always turn out looking too realistic. But now I have a tool that can make even my worst squiggles look good. It’s Google AutoDraw and it’s pretty amazing! Just grab a laptop, desktop, phone or tablet and point the browser to http://autodraw.com where you’ll be greeted with a… Read More
The Google Translate app is a great tool when traveling to another country, and it’s now available in Japanese. You just need to fire up the app, point your camera at the Japanese text, and the English translations will appear overlaid on your screen—even if you don’t have an Internet or data connection! Google Translate… Read More
As details about Google’s new Pixel flagship phones trickled out over the past few days and weeks, I’ve been consistently saying to friends that I would not (probably) be buying one. I’d already gone through the whole spontaneous purchase experience with the iPhone 7 only to return it a week later due to not loving… Read More
Even though I have my mobile number added to the Do Not Call list, I get a dozen spam calls to my phone every week. They are almost always a pre-recorded message from someone named Sally or Sarah telling me that… well, I don’t know what they want to tell me because I always hang… Read More
Finally, an iOS keyboard that I’ve been wanting! Gboard is Google’s new app for the iPhone and iPad that lets you search web results, search emojis and GIFs without leaving the keyboard. It also brings glide typing (think, Swype) to iOS. I just downloaded it, and it’s made me so happy. iPhone and iPad users, this might… Read More
One of the features that sets Android apart from other operating systems is its ability to be customized. Google isn’t afraid to allow users to customize their devices to suit their individual needs. I assume Google was thinking along those lines when it created its newest product, Mode. Mode is a line of “snap-and-swap” watch bands… Read More
A few years ago Google purchased Nik, a German company that developed the Snapseed photo app. Along with Snapseed, Nik also developed several photo editing plugins: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, and Dfine. These plugins work with popular editing programs like Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture. This… Read More
In the past, I had so many Chrome bookmarks that when I went to search for a particular bookmarked web page at a later date, I had great difficulty finding it again and would sometimes have to perform another Google search. My bookmark chaos was so frustrating that it drove me to hunt for a… Read More
How would you like to turn your TV (or any HDMI display) into a Chrome OS computer for only $85? Chromebit CS10 is an HDMI dongle that will do just that. It has a Rockchip Quad-Core RK3288C Processor, 2GB memory (2GB LPDDR3 at 1066MHz), ARM Mali-T764 quad-core GPU, 16GB of eMMC storage, one USB 2.0… Read More
Spotify is offering new Premium subscribers a free Chromecast if they pay for the first 3 months in advance. That’s $30 up front and then $10 monthly from the fourth month onward. The Chromecast itself retails for $35, so if you’ve been waiting to try either product, now’s the time. This promotion runs until the… Read More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU3YuvNRhVY Gmail has become the defacto standard for email these days because of its ease of use and great features. But some people still have legacy Yahoo and Hotmail/Outlook accounts. Google has supported these other email systems in their Gmail app for around a year now, but they have just announced on their blog that… Read More
Google has announced that it’s going to shut down its Picasa Desktop application on March 15th, 2016 in order to focus entirely on Google Photos. If you are a user of the Picasa desktop app, it will continue to work, but the download link and updates will no longer exist after March. If you are a… Read More
To increase awareness for Safer Internet Day 2016, Google is giving users 2GBs of free Google Drive storage space when they take a quick online security checkup today. Don’t groan, the checkup is actually quick, painless and really useful. You’ll see what devices and services are using your google account and will have the ability… Read More
Google is offering a short-term incentive program called Tap 10 to encourage users to use Android Pay. If you use it 10 times from now until February 29, you have the possibility of winning “credits in the Google Store/App Store for a song (e.g. music track from Google Play), movie (e.g. video from Google Play)… Read More
