Author: Clinton

Netflix has made a few big changes to their Android app these last few months.  First came the ability to download movies and TV shows to your phone or tablet for viewing offline.  Now, and equally as important for some, today’s update brings the ability to store that offline content on an SD card.  The update is version 4.13.0 Build 14540 for those keeping score at home and it is rolling out now in the Play Store.  Once you have the update, when you want to download a movie or show, you will be asked where you want to store that content.  Select your SD card if your phone has one and off you go.  The content is downloaded to your card instead of your device’s main storage.

Earlier today, Google announced some key initiatives around Chromebooks and education at BETT, an event in London focused on technology in education.  The announcement included announcements around new stylus enabled Chromebooks and, of course, the coming of Android apps to the platform.  Adobe was highlighted in the release as being a company who had optimized their Creative Cloud apps to work on these new Android-enabled Chromebooks.

Adobe has released a suite of Android apps optimized for Chromebooks. The Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop Mix, Lightroom Mobile, Illustrator Draw, Photoshop Sketch, Adobe Comp CC, and Creative Cloud Mobile will be available for free download, expanding creative options for students and the capability of stylus and world-facing camera.

While several apps have already been optimized to work on Chromebooks, the Creative Cloud apps is a big deal.  It will allow those in education – students and teachers – to be more creative in their studies while being touch and stylus enabled as they would be on an Android phone or tablet.

If there is one mid-range Chromebook that exemplifies how far the platform has come, it could well be the Acer Chromebook 14.  This comfortably priced $286 Chromebook has all of the features you expect from a device running Chrome OS but it has something that so many others lack:  Style and panache.  The all aluminum chassis is beautiful, the Full HD display is easy on the eyes and it has the performance to keep up with your day-to-day tasks.  But the added bonus of this particular Chromebook is that it has the ability to run Android apps and it can do it on the main production line of Chrome OS (the Stable channel).  That makes it one of the best all around Chromebooks out there.

I recently picked up the Acer Chromebook 14 and after using it for several weeks, it is hands down the best Chromebook I’ve used to date.  My reliable and fantastic HP Chromebook 11 G4 has been replaced and without giving away the entire review, I have no hesitation in recommending this offering from Acer.  It is just phenomenal to use day in and day out.  Here is my review.

I am apologetically addicted to skiing.  I love tech and my career but at 9 times out of 10, if you ask me what I’m thinking about, I’m going to tell you skiing.  2017 has been a great season for me so far and like many skiers and riders, I want to keep track of where I’ve been, how fast I’ve gone and how many vertical feet I’ve skied in a day.  One of the best and most complete apps for this is Snocru.  The app allows you to track all of these statistics for the day and does it in a battery friendly way.  Snocru also lets you link up with friends who are skiing with you so you can compare stats and share that information with each other or on social networks like Facebook.

I’ve been using the app for the past few weeks to track my skiing and it has quickly become a must-have app for me.  If you are a skier or snowboarder, you will probably find it a must-have app too.

Some fun food for thought this Monday morning.  There is a new commit in the Chrome OS source that points to a detachable UI design.  In other words, a detachable tablet-like Chrome OS device.  The commit was found by the team over at Chrome Unboxed and the top lines of the change says it all:

While there isn’t a whole lot know about Poppy, this appears to be the first committed change to Chrome OS for a detachable device.  That would give users a wealth of usability options that we can see today in some of the Windows 10 based devices.

Good news for those of you with the Huawei Honor 8.  The Android Nougat update has been released for the phone and is rolling out to users via an OTA update.  The update will bring all of the things you expect with Android Nougat but it also includes the EMUI 5.0 user experiences to the phone.  This new version of Huawei’s Android experience has been well received on other devices and comes with their newly announced machine learning technology built into it.

The update for the Honor 8 is just over 2Gb in size so you will want to make sure that you are on Wi-Fi to download it.  Once you have it, the install process will take about 20 minutes and a reboot is required.