Author: Clinton

Users of the Chrome browser for Windows, MacOS and Linux will want to grab the latest update rolling out.  Chrome Build 53 has been pushed out by the Chromium team and with it comes a whole host of fixes, security patches and updates.  Specifically, the build is version 53.0.2785.89 for those keeping score at home and it contains 13 high priority updates amongst the total of 20 updates.  Many of those fixes have to do with Heap Overflows and spoofing which the Chromium team has closed thanks to the help of contributors globally.  If you are running Chrome on your desktop, go to chrome://help and it will automatically start downloading the update for you.  Remember that you will need to do an restart of the browser to kick in the new version.

Fall Fashion Week is nearly here and Google Search is making it easier than ever to follow the events, fashion houses, designers and, of course, the fashions during the events.  Across the world starting next week and with events in New York, Milan, Paris and London (to name a few), keeping up with all of it can be challenging.  Google Search is aiming to make it just a bit easier.  Starting now you can type in “Fashion Week” in Search and it will bring you designers, top stories and links to information from these events from around the world.

And this year in Google Search on your mobile phone, you can see the latest styles straight from the runway, hear directly from the designers, shop your favorite looks, see the schedule of events, find related news and follow the action like you’re sitting in the front row — or even backstage.

Google has partnered with BFA and firstVIEW to give you a wealth of information about what is going on not only on the runway but behind the scenes, the parties and of course the celebrity sightings. For Search users, you get the benefit of just being able to go one place to get all the information you want on the events around the globe.

Today marks the first anniversary of the release of OnHub, the home router that aimed at making Wi-Fi connectivity easy.  Beyond this though, OnHub was positioned with its antenna array and other features as being a potential hub for home automation and Internet of Things (IoT) integration.  To date, that promise has gone largely unfulfilled with the exception of IFTTT support a few months ago.  That is changing today with an announcement from the team at Google that OnHub is now partnered with Phillips so you can control your Hue lights with your OnHub.

Today, we’re celebrating OnHub’s first birthday and announcing a new partnership with Philips Lighting, the first connected home device you can control directly with OnHub. We know people don’t like having too many apps on their phones, so we made it possible to control your home’s Philips Hue lights without downloading an app. Now anyone connected to your OnHub can type “On.Here” in a computer, tablet, or mobile browser and control the most popular features of your Philips Hue lights from there. Crank up the party lights!

It’s is a great addition to see to the router and hopefully is a sign of things to come.

The development team at Primate Labs has released the latest edition of the Geekbench app for Android.  Geekbench 4 comes with some new CPU and GPU testing models to give you an accurate representation of how your device performs against other devices out there.  One of the big benefits of Geekbench is that it is cross platform so you get a bigger swath of data in the testing results.

Geekbench 4 includes updated CPU tests that model real-world tasks and applications. These tests are designed to quickly and accurately measure mobile CPU performance. Every Geekbench 4 CPU test is multi-core aware, allowing Geekbench 4 to measure the full potential of your device’s CPU.

In addition to the new CPU tests, there is also a new GPU test to measure the graphics performance of your device too.

One big change in Android Nougat is the ability to adjust the urgency of notification.  In Android Marshmallow, you can you somewhat have a binary decision when it came to notifications.  With Nougat, you have far more granular controls around notifications and, in fact, have six levels of notifications that you can set for applications.  The nice thing is that you can set this for each and every app on your device should you want to go through that process.

In this How To I will show you how to access the Power Notifications Controls and how to configure them for applications.

A small but important update has rolled out on Google Photos online.  The update now has burst photos that you have taken from your phone or tablet and have sync’d to the cloud rendered as a group of photos and not individual photos.  The change follows an update to the Google Photos Android and iOS apps a few weeks back where the same functionality was introduced.  Now you will get the same viewing experience across the web and your devices of burst photos.