Author: Clinton

Last week I published a list of Android Wear watches that would be seeing the Android Oreo update.  At the time of that post, only a handful of watches had started to see the update being pushed down to them via an OTA.

What a difference a week makes.

Google has updated the list on their site and now 15 of the 30 watches slated to get the update how have it rolling out.  It is a very fast roll out for a big update like this.  Here are the Android Wear watches that now have Oreo coming to them via an OTA update:

• Fossil Q Venture
• LG Watch Sport
• Louis Vuitton Tambour
• Michael Kors Sofie
• Montblanc Summit
• Hugo BOSS BOSS Touch
• Movado Connect
• Tommy Hilfiger 24/7 You
• Guess Connect
• Gc Connect
• Fossil Q Founder 2.0
• Fossil Q Marshal
• Fossil Q Wander
• Michael Kors Access Bradshaw
• Michael Kors Access Dylan

As for those watches that are slated to get it but haven’t seen it yet, they are after the break.

Google’s Project Tango will be shut down on March 1, 2018 as the company turns their attention, and that of developers, to the software-only ARCore.  The news came from the Project Tango Twitter account where the Google team behind it thanked developers for their work over the past three years on the hardware-software Augmented Reality solution.

We’re turning down support for Tango on March 1, 2018. Thank you to our incredible community of developers who made such progress with Tango over the last three years. We look forward to continuing the journey with you on ARCore. https://t.co/aYiSUkgyie

— Tango (@projecttango) December 15, 2017

The news should not be shocking at this point for developers or consumers for that matter. Google has been clear over the course of 2017 that ARCore, which is now in Developer Preview 2, will be the company’s AR solution going forward.  It has a lot of benefits including being hardware independent.

After the release of Chrome 63 for Android and desktop browsers, Chrome OS is now getting the treatment.  Chrome OS build 63.0.3239.86 (Platform version: 10032.71.1) was released last yesterday (December 15, 2017) and will be coming to the majority of Chromebooks over the course of the next few days.  Google did not release a specific list of devices that were not getting the update.

Oddly, Google did not release any details on what is improved or new in this update.  The only statement in the announcement is that it contains “a number of bug fixes and security updates”.  That could well mean that the focus is simply on overall stability but it is likely that, like the desktop browser, the Flags page is now in Material Design.

I have not received the update this morning but will verify any changes in an update to this post as I find them.

Blackberry has announced that the Blackberry PRIV, the first Android based device the company released two years ago, will no longer be seeing regular updates.  The news isn’t shocking and fits with what most manufactures, including Google, do when it comes to software updates.  Most only go out 24 months from release of the device.

For their part, Blackberry is doing their best to spin the news, indicating that they made the PRIV more secure out-of-the-box and it needed less patching anyway.  They also indicated that they will be providing updates should a critical security flaw be discovered and that warranty support is still provided.

Technology and applications come and go but rarely do they stick around for decades in some form or fashion.  That has been the case with AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM.  The first version of the chat client for Windows came in 1997, allowing friends and family to communicate with each other over the proprietary solution.

Today however, we say goodbye to the messaging platform.  AOL announced back in October that they would be killing off the messaging service and as of now, they have no replacement for it.  It is unlikely they will ever replace it given the number of hugely popular messaging apps out there like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Skype (and many more).  Simply put, the competition for AIM was just to great and without innovation, technology, applications, and services eventually die.

With the premier of Star Wars:  The Last Jedi less than 24 hours away, it is time to get even more hyped up with wallpapers celebrating the movie.  As you may know, earlier this morning OnePlus announced a special edition OnePlus 5T, their latest flagship phone, that was Star Wars themed.  The phone, which functionally is identical to the standard OnePlus 5T, comes with 10 special edition wallpapers.

Well, as you would expect, they are now in the wild.  Engineering folks over at XDA have broken out the wallpapers and made them available.  I, in turn, have uploaded them to the Wallpapers page here on the site for everyone to download.

To save those of you who aren’t overly interested in the wallpapers, I’ve placed them after the break so you don’t have to see them.  But if you do, read on!