Author: Clinton

Google has made a change to their transaction fee schedule for Android Developers that, eventually, works in their favor.  Effective January 1, 2018, developers who have a subscriber who has been using their app for 12 months will get their transaction fee cut from 30% to 15%.  This only impacts subscriptions and not one-off in-app purchases.

Google has outlined the rules of engagement on this for developers and there is a bit of wiggle room on it.  Basically to quality for the cut, the subscriber has to fall in one of these areas over a 12 months period.

• Subscribers within a grace period
• Subscribers with introductory pricing
• Subscribers who upgrade or downgrade to a different plan
• Subscribers who re-sign up within two months of canceling

The move is aimed to give developers more money and mirrors, to an extent, what Apple did in 2017.

One of the best features of Google Home when it comes to audio is one that I suspect many have not heard of or used.  It is called Home Grouping and it allows you to put your Home and Chromecast audio devices into a logical group inside the Home app.  Once done, you can give the command to play music on that group and it will play across all of your Home devices.  It is a great feature and is easy to setup.

First, make sure you have the latest Google Home app on your phone.  Next, make sure that your phone and the Home, and the Chromecast devices you want to add to your group are all on the same network.  In other words, you can’t do this while you are on a business trip or on holiday.  You have to be home to do it.  Finally, make sure all of your Home device and Chromecast devices are turned on so they can be found.  With that, let’s get to the How To.

Today’s Deal is on the powerful and ultra thin Lenovo Yoga Book Android tablet.  The 10″ 2-in-1 tablet is my current Android tablet of choice and you can pick up a great deal on it right now.  The Champagne Gold model is down to $275, a savings of $224 off the original price.

The Yoga Book has a 10.1″ display that gives Full HD resolution of 1200 x 1920.  It is powered by the Intel Atom x5-Z8550 processor, a quad-core processor that is clocked at 2.4GHz.  That is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.  That internal storage can be expanded up to an additional 256GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.  Also, the Lenovo Yoga Book can take advantage of Adaptive Storage in Android Nougat so once you have a MicroSD card installed, it can act as part of the main storage on the device.

Microsoft OneNote, the free note taking app from the Redmond based company, has a new update rolling out for Android users.  The update, version 15.0.8827.2090 for those keeping score at home and who like playing version number BINGO!, brings several new features including integration with Microsoft Office Lens.

For those who don’t know, Office Lens is the scanning and whiteboard capturing app that allows to save them as photos.  Now the apps are more tightly integrated so you can capture something with Office Lens while in OneNote.

As we roll the calendar forward to 2018, many of us will be looking to the new year as a chance to start living a healthier lifestyle.  In fact, “weight loss” and “exercise” are among the most common new year resolutions that people set for themselves.  It is said that it takes 3 weeks of doing something before it becomes a habit which makes the month of January critical for the success of your goals or resolutions.

For me, living a healthier lifestyle started in June 2009.  At the time was weighed in at 285 lbs (129 kilos) and was making every poor food and exercise decision you could make.  Fast forward to December 2009 and I was 210 lbs.  As of January 1, 2018, I tipped the scales at 199 lbs.  That’s nearly 10 lbs over my ideal weight of 190 lbs but now you know one of my goals for the new year.

Fortunately we live in the future.  There are dozens of apps out there to help you achieve these healthy goals both for Android and for iPhone but like so many things, it is a question of which one to use.  That’s where this article tries to help.  I’ve compiled a list of apps that I use to help me maintain my diet and overall health.  This is by no means an exhaustive list nor am I suggesting that these are the best of the best.  These are the apps that work for me and they have worked a long time in some cases.  Hopefully they will do the same for you.

A new firmware update is rolling out for the Lenovo Yoga Book that users will want to pick up when they can.  The update brings some much needed stability improvements to the ultra thin 2-in-1 Android tablet including fixing some random crash issues.

The new build is version YB1-X90F_171013 for those keeping score at home.  It is a 300MB download and takes about 10 minutes to get installed.  The Android Security Update patch is incremented up to the August 2017 level which isn’t great but better than nothing I suppose.

The biggest improvements however is overall stability of the device.