Author: Clinton

Google has announced support Movies Anywhere, the service that allows you to synchronize your movies across multiple devices along with movies that you have purchased from other digital stores.  The concept behind Movies Anywhere is to give you one repository for all of the movies you have bought from Apple’s iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu and now Google Play.

Today, we’re taking it one step further by adding support for Movies Anywhere, allowing you to bring together your movies from Google Play, Amazon, iTunes and Vudu into a single library that you can access on any of your devices, regardless of where the purchase was originally made.

The addition of Google Play is a real win for consumers as you don’t have to go to multiple places on your devices or try to remember where you purchased movies in the past.  They all show up in one app now.

Chrome OS has come a long way in 6 years that it has been around.  The platform has infinitely more features and functionality, has a robust ecosystem of extensions and now Android apps, and is no longer a “cheap” OS for “cheap” hardware.  It has grown up, a lot.

But if there is one area that it still has lagged when comparing it to the likes of MacOS or Windows 10, it has been in the User Interface.  Yes it has changed a bit, most notably with the introduction of a task bar in 2012, but fundamentally it has always been a browser-based platform with a clunky but functional UI.  But that changed in a big way this week with the released of Chrome OS build 61.

Build 61 brings the most dramatic changes to the User Interface to date.  It brings an all new app launcher, significantly improved support for Android apps and a much more polished lock screen.  These many not sound like big ticket items but these changes bring the platform as a whole more into the mainstream look of an Operating System and out of the “geeks only” look that the platform has had to this point.  It also points to the never ending work that the Chromium team within Google perform to not only keep it as a secure and reliable OS but also bringing features that users are expecting in a desktop or laptop platform.  With more improvements on the horizon, this new look UI will only improve over the course of 2018.

In a series of Tweets answering users questions on Windows Phone, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore admits that, outside of business customers, the platform is in maintenance mode.  It is the closest yet that the company has indicated that they have no further plans for developing a mobile platform.

Of course we’ll continue to support the platform.. bug fixes, security updates, etc. But building new features/hw aren’t the focus. 😟 https://t.co/0CH9TZdIFu

— Joe Belfiore (@joebelfiore) October 8, 2017

Based on Mr. Belfiore’s sad-face emoji, it doesn’t appear he’s all too thrilled with the situation for fans and users of Windows Phone, but the reality is that the phone platform will slowly ride off into the sunset.

The Google Daydream app has a new update rolling out in the Play Store that brings the promised support of Chromecast to the app.  The update, version 1.10.170912063 for those keeping score at home, now allows you to cast whatever you are doing or viewing on your Daydream headset so others can join in on the fun.

The ability to cast from Daydream was something that Google discussed back in May at Google I/O and was expected with the next major update of the app, version 2.0, but it appears that made it in a little earlier.

The Chrome team has released a major update to Chrome OS into the stable channel.  The update is build 61.0.3163.113 (Platform version: 9765.76.0) and it rolling out to devices today.  Normally on Chrome OS releases, there are a few devices that are left off the update for various reasons – device specific features, already on a different train, etc. – but this release has a pretty extensive list and it contains a lot of popular Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

If you have one of the devices listed below, the update to the Chrome 61 build will not be available for your device:

Yesterday during the Google product event, a new Find My Phone through Google Assistant was demonstrated.  Using Assistant on your Google Home, it can locate your phone by ringing it, even if it is in Do Not Disturb, so you can find it somewhere in your house.  The question during the demo was when the feature would roll out to everyone?

The answer is right now.

The Find My Phone feature has gone live and now you can simply go to your Google Home and say, “OK Google, find my phone”.  It will then identify the phone you are wanting to find (if you have multiple phones) and will then ask you if you want it to ring your phone at full volume.  So long as you have Find My Phone enabled on your account and Android phone, the feature works – and well.