Author: Clinton

Google has informed webmasters via a blog post that an upcoming changing the Google Search algorithm will take mobile site speed into consideration for page ranking.  Referring to it as the “Speed Update”, starting in July 2018, sites that have slow response times will have that factored into their overall search results within Google Search.

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page.

However, mobile site speed is not the only consideration in page ranking nor will it be the only factor come July.

If there were doubts in your mind about the growth of Google Pay, formerly Android Pay, halting in the new year, rest easy.  Kicking off 2018 right, the pay service from Google added 80 new institutions today to the roster that support the service with their debit and credit cards.  With these new additions, there are now a whopping 1,196 banks and credit unions that support Google Pay.

The new additions, as has been the case for a while now under the Android Pay moniker, are mostly regional and local institutions.  The big national banks supported the service in the early days.

A new update to the Android Wear app is rolling out in the Play Store today, bringing some visual improvements as well as improvements for accessibility users.  The update to the app is version 2.7.0.180439970 which will then have build 2.8.0.181612071 to send to your Wear watch.  Once you get the new app update, you’ll need to also perform an update on your watch itself.  You should have a notification that there is a new update to the Android Wear app on the watch itself.

As for what is new, there are improved typefaces and fonts in this build.  The aim of these is to improve glanceability (i.e. readability) when you glance at your watch.  Also, the base theme for your watch’s menu will appear noticeably darker.  This is likely a part of the effort to improve glanceability.

If there is one key take away from the 2017 annual report from App Annie, it is that the mobile app economy is very healthy.  The new report indicates that some $86 billion was spent in 2017 globally on apps.  That is a 105% increase in spending since 2015.  That spending growth came through the estimated 175 billion app downloads that happened in the year, a 60% increase itself since 2015.

China led the way in when it came to overall spending.  Consumers in that country increased their spending by 205% since 2015 and spend more time in apps than any other country.  China’s consumers also increased their downloading of apps by 125% since 2015.  Interestingly, India moved past the United States for the increase in app downloads to hold a distance second place position.

Late yesterday, Google and Huawei both announced an agreement where by the Chinese manufacture will start integrating the RCS-powered Android Messages app into their upcoming devices.  The move means that Huawei will abandon their current messaging app in favor of Google’s for a richer user experience.

With Android Messages and RCS messaging, HUAWEI devices will offer a rich native messaging and communications experience. Features such as texting over WiFi, rich media sharing, group chats, and typing indicators will now be a default part of the device. Messages from businesses will also be upgraded on HUAWEI’s devices through RCS business messaging from Google.

Huawei also announced that they will be integrating with Google Duo for video calls directly from Messages via carrier’s ViLTE services.

It looks like native video recording from your Chromebook’s webcam is finally coming to Chrome OS.  A new commit in the Chrome Review Gerrit points to support for video recording so long as the device is using the MediaRecorder APIs found in the platform.

We are implementing recording functionality in chrome camera app on ChromeOS devices with MediaRecorder APIs. Enabling HW VEA would greatly improve the performance. For example, FPS increases from 7 to 30 on kevin.

For reference, the device name Kevin is the Samsung Chromebook Pro.