Author: Clinton

A few weeks ago at Google I/O we saw the announcements from Google on Google Allo and Google Duo.  For those who may not recall, Allo is the new messaging app from the company that brings a significant amount of personalization and leverages Google’s machine learning on the back end to allow you to get quick replies that are more personal to you.  Duo is the company’s new one-on-one video app that allows you to make video calls seamlessly with other people, even if they are on iOS.

A few days after I/O, Google set up Allo and Duo in the Google Play Store so that you could add them to your Wishlist.  They moved it up a level now and you can pre-register for both apps in the Store today.

It seems like every week there is a sale going on at Amazon on SanDisk MicroSD storage but the 200GB model is often left out of the loop.  Not today.  If you have been wanting to pick up the top-end card you can do it, today only, for $59.99 on Amazon.  That’s a massive different from when the card was released last year at over $200 but more recently has been in the $80 range.  Obviously, if you are planning to put this into your Android phone or tablet, make sure it can support this big of a card.  Many devices, especially those over a year old, can’t do it so make sure before you make the purchase.  If it is too big, you can still pick up a great deal on the 128GB card.

If you want a humongous phone, Asus has you covered.  The company over the weekend launched their new ZenFone 3 series of phones with the top-end Ultra coming to market with a massive 6.8″ display.  All three phones are aimed at meeting consumers where they want on both a performance level and a display size and while no release date was given on the new lineup, you should expect to seem them at some point over the course of this summer.

The entry level ZenFone 3 is powered by Snapdragon 625 processor, has 4GB of RAM, 32GB of Storage and 16MP rear camera.  It also sports a fingerprint scanner and a 5.5″ display that renders at 1920 x 1080.

Today marks the first birthday of Google Photos, the photo backup and sharing service-meets-app.  It was announced at Google I/O 2015 and was officially launched on May 27, 2015 as a website and an app for Android with iOS being added shortly thereafter.  In that year, the service has grown tremendously as have the functionality of the apps and the website.  Today, as part of the celebrations, Google has released some facts and figures on how the service is used and how much it has grown in popularity.  We knew of course that it had grown to over 200 million active monthly users based on comments from I/O this year.  But there are even more interesting figures to discuss.

Twitter and Spotify have teamed up to give you a pretty cool way to share music from the streaming service to your timeline.  Starting today, you can link to a Spotify track on your timeline and it will generate an audio card where your followers can listen to the track for 30 seconds.

You’ll want the volume up for this #SummertimeSoundtrack. Tweets with @Spotify tracks now play in your timeline! 🎧https://t.co/93avzwiQbs

— Twitter (@twitter) May 26, 2016

The idea, of course, is to attract your followers who aren’t using Spotify to join the service but it is also a great way to sample a song to decide if you want to purchase it.

In a case that had far reaching implications for Google, Oracle and developers, a jury in San Francisco has ruled in favor of Google over a claim from Oracle and the use of Java APIs in Android.  At the heart of the case were 37 APIs which Google, at the behest of Oracle back in the day, used in the development of Android.  Google argued successfully that the APIs fell under fair use and were not subject to licensing or patent infringement.  While it was never fully disclosed how much Oracle was seeking in damages, it has been suggested it would have been upwards of $9 billion.