Author: Clinton

Google has pushed an update to Google Drive for Android that has several small but nice updates.  The most notable change is the ability to pin files or folders to your phone or tablet’s home screen.  This gives you quick access to that file without actually having to open up the Drive app itself.  To use this new feature is pretty simple.  Once you have open up the app, next to the file or folder in the list will be an overflow menu (3 vertical dots).  Tap that and you will see an option “Add to Home screen”.  Tap that and it will be added.  To remove it, just tap-and-hold then drag it to Remove.

Microsoft has announced that users of the new Outlook.com experience will soon have improved support for handling files from Google Drive and photos from Facebook.  The updates are going to be rolling out over the course of the next few weeks and it is a back end change so there is nothing you need to do.  Once you have the update, Google Drive files will be available to you from the Attach menu when creating an email.  Today when you want to do this you have to open a wholly separate tab.  That will no longer be the case and it will make attaching files out of Google Drive quicker and simpler.

Pandora has announced a big change to their subscription tier and their free tier for its users.  The great thing is, all these new features will remain at the same current $4.99 per month subscription fee.  First, the change brings a rebranding of sorts to the pay service.  Pandora One will now be known as Pandora Plus and will be rolling out to users in the coming months.  with this roll out, exiting One customers will be moved to Plus and when it happens, they will get unlimited skips of songs as well as replays.  In One you are limited to the number of skips and repeats per hour.

A couple of weeks ago, a new feature rolled out in Google Plus (G+) that allowed you to leave images in comments on posts.  This was very well received by users on the social platform as it gave a bit more of a personalized response to something (with an image or a GIF) instead of just text.  Now the Google Plus team has expanded that a bit further.  In the latest update, version 8.7 for those keeping score at home, you can now view those images in the replies in full screen and yes, you can save them to your phone to add to that awesome meme or GIF library.

In other words, the images in comments are treated and act like images in an original post on the site.

Google’s new video app, Google Duo, has been out about a month now and while the 10 million downloads are okay, it isn’t exactly setting the world alight.  If you haven’t tried it out, it is a great video experience.  To help get awareness of the app up and to show it in action, Google released a series of 10 adverts for the app and some of them are really good.  My favorite, which you can find after the break, is something we can all related to:  A lost sock in the laundry.

The range of videos are centered around things that go together.  Like a pair of socks.  Or salt and pepper.  Or Peanut Butter and Jelly.  You get the idea.  Duos

Microsoft and their mobile devices, Microsoft Lumia, were in the news again this week and not in a good way.  The company has all-but confirmed that they will be killing off the devices and brand by the end of 2016.  As a long time H/PC, PocketPC, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone users (I started this site back in 2004 writing about Handheld PCs and PocketPCs), it is a shame to see a company with the resources of Microsoft so utterly screw up their mobile strategy around devices.  There are a lot of reasons for this of course and I could spend a lot of digital ink on it.  But the bottom line is, from a device perspective, Microsoft made a long series of major missteps that has led to where we are today:  Virtually no Windows powered phones.  Sure there is the new HP Elite X3 but at the price point it has ($799), it will see very few and really, it’s aimed at the enterprise anyway.

But to suggest that Microsoft’s mobile strategy is dead because their phones are dead is a bit of a stretch and dare I say, false.  Their strategy is very much alive and well across both Android and iOS and proves that you don’t necessarily have to have phones in the mix.  Microsoft’s focus has been pretty clear for the last two years.  First, they want you using Microsoft services on whatever devices you want to use.  Second, they want you to have the apps to make you productive and give you near the same level of functionality as you have on the desktop.  These two things not only make up a mobile strategy but it makes a pretty solid one.