Author: Clinton

Google has just released the factory images and security bulletin for the May 2016 Android Security Update.  Those who want to manually flash their Nexus devices to the latest build can get the images to do so while those who want to wait until the OTA is available will have a few more days or weeks to wait.  The update is a fairly big one with 25 fixes for security issues.  Once it is available via an OTA, it is highly recommended that users download it and apply it to their devices.  Of the 25 updates in the release, 6 were marked as critical and mostly focus on elevation of permissions or remote code execution.  Most users will never see these issues but Google and those who help them “bug hunt” continually work to close any potential issues before a customer encounters them.

Google has been tinkering with the Google Play Store behind the scenes and that has lead to the addressing of two annoying and sometimes confusing issues.  The company is rolling out an update that fixes the download size indicator when you are viewing an app’s details and the download progress bar when you download the update.  So what’s the big deal here?  For some, this will be a no big deal but for others, this was a real annoyance.  The first issue was on the update size for an app you have installed.  Before now, the Google Play Store would show only the full size of the download.  Unless it is a comprehensive redo of an app, an OTA update is usually a fraction of that size.  So take Gmail for example.  The app itself is 40MB and the latest update was only about 6MB.  Before this update, you would see the update size as 40MB, not 6MB, so it would lead people to believe that these update were taking up a huge amount of space on their devices.  The reality is that it wasn’t but this not-so-clear download size didn’t help matters.

Today over at Amazon, they have a great deal on the Anker SoundCore Bluetooth Speaker.  Right now you can pick one up in Black, Red or Blue for $29.99.  That is a savings of $50 off the regular $79.99 price and all three colors are still in stock.  The SoundCore offers you 24 hours of playtime between charges and supports Bluetooth 4.0.  That means you are going to be able to get up to 66′ of range between your phone or tablet and the speaker as you stream your music.

Internet Explorer, the long time de facto browser on the desktop, has been upended by Google’s Chrome in the latest report from NetMarketShare.  Reporting for the end of April 2016, Google Chrome had a 41.66% share of desktop browser users while Internet Explorer had 41.35%.  Yes it is a small different but looking at the longer history of how Chrome has made gains while IE has declined, this difference in percentage will only grow over the course of the next year.  At one point, Chrome trailed IE by some 26.77% just last June.

Microsoft has rolled out an update to the Outlook for Android app that brings much improved calendar and task integration from other services.  If you are an Outlook for Android user, after you get this update, you will be able to add tasks and calendar events from Wunderlist, Facebook and Evernote to the app. The idea, of course, is that Outlook becomes your single place you go to manage any tasks or calendar events.  To this point you could only have events from your Exchange account, Hotmail or Gmail calendar show up in the calendar section of the app.  Tasks where strictly limited to whatever you did locally or Exchange.

Google, much like what that did with the Nexus 9, have quietly dropped the entry level Chromebook Pixel from the Google Store.  The $999 premium Chromebook is gone although you can still pick up the beefy $1200 model in the store.  The timing of the removal from the store is not coincidental.  Just last week Google and HP announced the far more affordable, yet premium, Chromebook 13 G1 that has an all metal body and starts at $499.  That’s half the cost of the base Chromebook Pixel with an improved processor and essentially the same high resolution display.