Author: Clinton

It appears that shipments for the new Google Home device have started for readers.  Multiple readers have either emailed or commented on Google+ of receiving shipment notifications of the $129 Google Assistant-powered device.  I too have received a shipment notification with it expected to arrive at the end of the week.

Aimed at competing with the Amazon Echo, Google Home brings the power of Google Artificial Intelligence to give you detailed information about your day, upcoming events, search information, travel information and the like.   While it is for everyone in the family, it tied to a single primary Google account.  Like Google OnHub, Home is aimed at sitting out in the open and doesn’t look like a piece of techno-kit sitting on a shelf.

Today Huawei pulled back the covers on their latest flagship Android phone, the Mate 9.  The 5.9″ display device has some impressive specs that will meet most power user needs when it hits the market in December.   It is the first phone that will have Huawei’s new Kirin 960 octa-core process and it will have the new ARM Mali-G71 GPU coupled with it.  Add to that 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and a 20MP dual camera setup, you have all the makings of a solid device that will be priced at around $776.

Microsoft has started rolling out an update to PowerPoint for Android that has a new Shape Recognition feature.  The update now gives you the option to have the app recognize any shape you draw with your finger or stylus in free form and snap that into a perfect version of that shape.  So, for example, if you draw a square, with this feature enabled, you will get a perfectly formed square on your slide instead of your free form version.  You can, of course, not enable this, but it is super handy and is something that until now hasn’t been in the mobile version of the app.

Love them or hate them, Apple does produce some awfully nice wallpapers for their iPhone, iPad and MacOS lineup.  As some of you may know, the beta for iOS 10.2 has started rolling out to those testing it.  In that beta are three new simple but beautiful wallpapers that you can now download to your phones here on the site.  All three are similar, featuring a stark black background with a blue, orange or pink semi-transparent stone in the middle.  They look great frankly and now you can add them to your Android phones.  Because, why not?

I’ve put thumbnails of each image after the break so for those who aren’t interested, you can move along.  For those who are interested, click on to get to them.

Fitbit has rolled out a pretty nice albeit minor update to their Android app this week.  The update, version 2.37 for those keeping score at home, has some improved charts and graphs for body mass and weight history.  While most people tend to think of Fitbit as an activity tracker – which they do well – their app is actually fairly comprehensive when it comes to tracking things like your diet, weight, water consumption and, of course, exercise.  This update mainly focuses on providing you a bit more information around your weight and body composition.

First, there is an updated body lean mass versus fat mass graph.  With this you can better visualize your body composition based on the inputs that your provide to the app for your weight and fat mass measurements.  This information, if you have the Aria scale, can be automatically synced to the app so you can see your lean mass versus fat mass in the app.

If you thought that Android Pay had killed off Google Wallet, think again.  Google has just rolled out an update web portal for the person-to-person payment service along with a refreshed Android app.  The update brings a completely refreshed website for Wallet that is Material Design in nature and intuitive on sending or receiving funds from others.  The app update mirrors this new look of the portal and it, as before, is simple to use.  The app is certainly faster than the website and has some added security features like requiring a PIN to get into it.  However, if you don’t have your phone handy, you now have an easy way to send or receive funds using the service.