Author: Clinton

Google Calendar for Android has been updated with a great new feature that is aimed at keeping you on track in various aspects of your life.  The new Goals feature allows you to setup specific goals and have them scheduled in your calendar to help you stay focused and to make sure that you have time to complete them.  The updated version of Google Calendar is in the Google Play Store now and should be rolling out via an OTA update to users over the course of the next few days.

There is an updated version of Google Drive that has hit the Google Play Store which brings an often requested feature to the app:  The ability to upload files directly to a folder.  The update was announced yesterday by the Google Apps team and it significantly changes the behavior of the app when you are uploading files to the cloud storage service.  Before, when you uploaded a file from your phone, it went to Uploads, a folder that served somewhat as a catch-all.  What this meant was you had to go back into Drive at some point and sort the uploads to your folders in which you wanted to store them.

Microsoft has released an updated version of Outlook for Android that brings a much improved ability to download email attachments on certain devices.  The updated version, build 2.0.57 for those keeping score at home, is available now in the Google Play Store and will be rolling out as an OTA update to those with the app installed over the course of the next few days.  In this new build, users will now have the ability to download an attachment to their device directly from the email view.  You can also do this download from the File page in the app.

If you are looking for a great deal for a back up phone or maybe a phone for the kids, you can pick up a great deal on a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S5 today over at Amazon.  Right now you can pick the phone up in either black or white for $159.99.  That is a savings of 80% off the full retail price when the phone was released.  The phone is unlocked so you will no problem getting it to work on either AT&T or T-Mobile here in the States.

Several months ago, Google outlined a change that was going to be happening for Google Play Games.  That change mostly circled around the removal of the Google+ account requirement for sign-in and the establishment of Gamer IDs, ala Microsoft Xbox.  The update to the Play Games app for Android that supports this change is now rolling out in the Play Store, giving users the opportunity to setup their Gamer ID and take advantage of the automatic sign-in process for games.

Google Contacts is a great contacts management app that has been available for Android 5.1 and higher users despite being a stand alone app for some time now.  That is changing a bit now and it is a good change.  The latest build of the app, version 1.4.9 for those keeping score at home, lowers the minimum Android version to Lollipop 5.0.  This may seem like a small thing but it actually opens up the app to a huge number of potential users.