Author: Clinton

Google Home for Android has been updated with a new Listen tab that makes it easier to find curated music streams across a wide range of services.  The app itself was updated last week but the new Listen tab has now been enabled on the back end.  If you don’t see it yet, don’t fret.  It will be there over the course of the next few days.  Once you have it, you will be able to see music streams from the likes of Spotify and Google Play Music that you can listen to at any time.  You will also get recommendation for apps that can be used by Google Home for music streaming.

The new Listen tab also gives you recommendations of artists and music streams based on your listening habits.  This is a great way to discover new music but also rediscover an old favorite from the past.

Listen Tab in Google Home

Google’s drive is to make it easier to find streaming music.  With so many options, having the ability to scan a single tab in the Home app makes things easier and faster for you.  If you have accounts with Spotify and Google Play Music, you will be able to open those apps from within the Home app to get to the music stream easily but you can also play them from within the Home app too.

Today’s Deal is on a wide range of SanDisk Ultra Class 10 MicroSD storage cards.  These high speed and highly reliable cards are great from Android devices as well as other devices (like Go Pro’s) for your storage needs.  Today there are a several that are on sale at Amazon starting at 32GB and going all the way up to 256GB of storage.

• 32GB Card – $12.78
• 64GB Card – $21.99
• 128GB Card – $40.99
• 200GB Card – $72.99
• 256GB Card – $149.99

All of these cards are waterproof, shockproof, and magnet proof so they are going to stand the test of time.

As always, make sure you check your phone or other device for the maximum capacity it can read before you purchase one of these SanDisk cards.  Most mid-market and flagship devices can handle

SanDisk 64GB MicroSD Card

128GB or even 256GB but lower costs devices may only be able to handle a 32Gb or 64GB card.  Just check your device’s specs before you order.  If you over order on size, the card will likely still work but you won’t get the full capacity – thus you paid too much!

The sale on these SanDisk cards is throughout the day and all of them are eligible for Amazon Prime free 2-day shipping.

Google has announced that the latest version of Chrome for Windows, Mac and Linux has a new CPU consumption throttle that will limit the power consumption of background tabs in the browser.  This new throttling policy should shows improvements to users in the form of prolonged battery life, something that Chrome and other browsers are known to impact.

The update is a change from the current timer model that is used in Chrome today.  That timer limits the refreshing of background tabs to once per second.  In this new timer, it is based on CPU consumption.  Build 57 will delay timers to the limit average of CPU load of 1% of a core.  So think of it as an augmented and improved timer model over the once-per-second timer used today.

Google Chrome for Windows

It should be noted that tabs playing audio or real-time connections (like WebRTC) won’t be impacted.

So what does this really mean for end users?  It should result in improved battery life.  With fewer timer updates happening in the background, you should see battery life improvement.  How much is going to be dependent on how many background tabs you have open at any given time.  Even with these improvements, it is recommended that you keep tabs to a minimum as you work throughout the day, especially if you are running your laptop on battery power.

Eventually the Chrome team wants to get tabs fully suspended in the background and leverage new APIs to bring them back to life when you need them.  That’s still a bit away but is the end goal for the team.

Last month I told you about the latest beta of Microsoft’s Arrow Launcher bringing support for Android tablets.  That support is now official.  The latest update to the popular launcher is rolling out in the Play Store now and with it comes support for tablets along with a handful of other updates & tweaks.  The support of tablets is something that long time Arrow users have requested of Microsoft as it gives a uniform experience across their devices.

Along with with, Arrow Launcher also supports horizontal layout for your apps page from the app drawer.  This is primarily aimed at tablets and it is an option that needs to be enabled.  The backup & restore feature also has more backup options available.  It still backs everything up to OneDrive but you can now have it save things like SMS messages too.

Microsoft Arrow Launcher on a Nexus 9

The utility page, something that was introduced in the last update to the app, can also be configured in this new release.  You can show it or hide it as well as chose if you want the card to be transparent or white.  For those who may have tried Arrow Launcher in the past, the utility page is now where you find things like your recent contacts, your recent documents and other information.  These all use to be separate pages in the launcher so having them all in once place makes life a bit easier.

If you have Arrow Launcher installed on your phone, you should get the update to the latest build over the course of the next few days.  Unless you are in the beta, you will need to go to the Play Store to install it on your tablet.

Today’s Deal is on the low profile USB Flash Drives from SanDisk.  Over at Amazon you can pick up the SanDisk Ultra Fit 64GB drive for $18 with other sizes available.  The Ultra Fit series are designed to fit into the USB 3.0 port of your PC, Mac or Chromebook and not protrude like a normal Flash Drive.  Indeed, the idea is that you can leave it in your computer without ever having to take it out when you slip it into a bag or backpack.

The sale is on the 32GB, 64GB and 128GB versions of the Ultra Fit.  All three are have a zippy read speed of 150MB/s so while they are too slow to run apps from, they are perfect for data, photos and videos.  The drives also come with SanDisk’s SecureAccess software to encrypt the drives should they ever be lost or stolen (although you can use MacOS and BitLocker encryption should you choose to do so instead).

I personally use one of these Ultra Fit drives in my Chromebook for additional storage.  They are fast and reliable and because of their size, they do not protrude from the side of my device significantly.  I’ve had one for the past 3 months now and have no problem recommending them to readers who are looking for additional storage for their laptop.

SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Regardless of the size of drive you pick up, they are all eligible for Amazon Prime free shipping.

Head on over to Amazon to check out the details on these great drives from SanDisk.

SanDisk Ultra Fit 32GB USB 3.0:$10.75

SanDisk Ultra Fit 64GB USB 3.0: $17.99

SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0: $31.89

With the March Android Security Update rolling out, February’s update is just now being rolled out by AT&T to some Samsung devices.  The update for the Galaxy Note 4, Note 5 and S5 Active are just now hitting customers. The updates themselves are quite small, under 200MB, and only contain the security update changes & fixes.  To put things into perspective, T-Mobile released the February Android Security Update for the Note 5 on their network on February 1st, the day the patch was released.

The challenge of upgrades and security patches is a well trodden road that we don’t need to visit yet again.  But it speaks volumes of the problem facing the platform when one carrier is releasing a security patch some 5 weeks after it was originally released.

Samsung Galaxy Note 5

The update for these devices shouldn’t take long to download given their size.  Once you have the download completed, your will need to reboot your device to apply the update which, all in, should take about 20 minutes to get done.  For reference, the build numbers for the updates are as follows:

• Galaxy Note 4 – MMB29M.N910AUCS2EPK4
• Galaxy Note 5 – MMB29K.N920AUCS4CQB2
• Galaxy S5 Active  – MMB29M.G870AUCS2DPK5

Unless you just absolutely have to do so, I strongly encourage readers to avoid carrier locked devices from any carrier.  Updates tend to be much slower from carriers while unlocked devices from manufactures, as a general rule, will get updates faster.  That doesn’t always hold 100% true but close enough.  Obviously devices from Google like the Pixel and Nexus phones get updates the quickest.