Verizon has released their 3rd quarter 2017 financial results and they are a mixed bag.  Revenue for the company rose by a mere 2.5% to $31.7 billion in the quarter when compared to the same quarter in 2016.  The company’s consolidated operating income margin for the quarter was 22.7% with a net income of $3.7 billion.  The financial report also reflects the completed acquisition of Yahoo, now under the name of Oath.  That was a $4.48 Billion charge on the company financials but the newly formed division of Yahoo and AOL generated revenue of $2 Billion.

Must of the generated revenue for Verizon came from new postpaid mobile subscribers.  In Q3 they added 603,000 with a churn of .97%.  That means there was a net add of 486,000 subscribers.  The churn figure is critical to any carrier as it reflects how many customers are staying with the company.  The lower the better.

Google has announced that Google WiFi is now available in five new countries in Europe.  That brings the total to 12 countries in which you can buy the easy-to-use mesh WiFi network solution.  When the solution launched, it was available in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and New Zealand.  Add to that list Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

The Google store in each of these 12 countries now has both the single and well as 3-pack WiFi solution available for purchase.

Google Play Books, the eReader app from Google, has a new update rolling out today.  The updated version, build 3.15.5 for those keeping score at home, is mostly a maintenance update but does bring stylus support to the app.  Once update, and if you have a device with a stylus, you can now use it to highlight text and select text as you read.

Support for styli is something that shouldn’t entirely be unexpected.  Devices like the Note8 and others have had stylus input for a while new Chromebooks like the Samsung Chromebook Pro, which can run Android apps, also comes with a pen.  Later this month, the new Pixelbook from Google will hit shelves and it has an optional PixelPen for inputs.  It’s only natural for apps to start picking up this input method as the line between Chrome OS and Android continues to blur.

Yesterday the Huawei Mate 10 lineup was announced, an update to last year’s popular Mate 9.  Today you can now download all of the wallpapers, 31 in all, from the Mate 10, Mate 10 Pro and Mate 10 Porsche Edition.

Huawei has always produced some stunning wallpapers for their devices and these don’t disappoint.  Covering a wide range from abstract to flowers to mountain scenes, the wallpapers are 2160 x 2160 so you will be able to use them on virtually any device – phone or tablet.

All 31 of the new wallpapers are now up on the Wallpaper page here on the site and I have added a few samples after the break for those that are curious.  As with all new wallpapers, they are at the bottom of the page so if you want to skip right down to them, just scroll down to the bottom.

Google has quietly added a great new feature to the Google Home lineup:  Sleep Timers.  According to an updated support page from the company, you can now set timers to play music for a specific duration of time as you prepare for bed or have Home play that lullaby for the little ones.   As with most Google Assistant commands for Home, it is pretty easy to setup.

The most basic way to setup a sleep timer with music is to say, “Hey Google, play (artist/genre/playlist) for (duration)”.  If you are just wanting a sleep timer, just say, “Hey Google, set a sleep timer for (duration)”.  You can also set up a sleep timer to stop at a certain time (say, 9:30 p.m.).  It is actually quite flexible in how you set up the timers.  While these fall under the category of sleep timers, you can use them for other purposes.  For example, you could set a time for 30 minutes with mediation music as you meditate in the morning.  Once the music stops, you know your session has ended.

Google has begun rolling out Site Blocking to Google WiFi users today.  The service, which leverages the company’s Safe Site technology, updates in real time behind the scenes to assure that adult site and other explicit sites are unreachable by minors in your home.  The feature leverages the Family WiFi feature in the Google WiFi app that allows you to designate devices of your children on the network and enable this new filtering as well as scheduling time when WiFi is accessible on the network.

Filtering of adult content is difficult these days but Google is trying to take the burden off of parents by having it do the heavy lifting of finding these sites.