Author: Clinton

In case you haven’t noticed, here in the United States, we are in the middle of a Presidential election campaign.  It is hotly contested and regardless of where you stand with any particular candidate, campaign financing is always a hot topic.  Now Google Search can get you the information on any candidate and how they (and who) has been funding their campaign.  The nice thing here is that it is completely unbiased.  The information Google is serving up is from the Center for Responsible Politics and they simply report facts.  No bias, no pick-your-wing-conspiracies.  Just financial facts.

It is update time for Chrome OS users.  The Chromium team in Google has just announced the release of build 49.0.2623.95 (Platform version: 7834.60.0) for all devices.  As usual, the update is full of bug and security fixes that we expect each month with a release but there are also several new features that are coming along with this build.  Perhaps the most notable is a new Material Design look for the Media Players on the platform. This certainly will give it a more modern look and feel over the more plain Chrome look of the past.

Google Cardboard, the app, has been updated with an all-new VR journey for users to enjoy.  The new Arctic Journey brings a fun albeit short demo of what you can do with Cardboard and is a good bit of fun.  In the demo, you can fly along side Arctic terns, you can plant flowers in a field and just enjoy the scenery and stars through your VR goggles.  Again, it’s short but it is well done and accessible in the main menu of the app.

If you are new to the app, this is the main app you use to start with Google’s low cost VR experience.  Here you can do things like fly around on Google Earth, take a tour of historic locations, watch your videos and view any Photo Spheres that you have created.  The Arctic Journey is just adding on to these basic experiences in the app.

Editor’s Note:  This post is concerning a feature in Android N.  As this new version of Android is still in development, the features described in this post could change between the time of the writing and when it is released to the public in the summer of 2016.

There was a time, in the not-to-distant-past, where being visually impaired made using a smartphone or even a PC challenging.  While huge strides have been made on the PC front, the accessibility changes needed on smartphones to help those with vision challenges have been slow to come.  It has improved significantly as both Google and Apple focus on this with their platforms, but there is always room for improvement.  As I dig into Android N further, it looks like those improvements are coming to the next generation of Android in a positive way.

This time last year, Google launched the stand alone Google Store, the place where you could get your Google hardware like Nexus phones and tablets along with Chromecasts and other Googlely goodies.  To celebrate the store’s first birthday, Google has dropped the price of the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P by $50 on any color and configuration you want.  That means you can pick up the 5X for as low as $349 and the 6P for $499.  But funny enough, Amazon has an even better deal on these phones if you don’t mind certain colors.

For long time Evernote users, the thought of leaving the service is daunting if for no other reason that the fear of losing notes and notebooks or, even worse, having to copy and paste all those notes into a new app.  That is the scenario that faced me at the beginning of this year.  As a long time Evernote user, my company standardized on Office 365, of which OneNote is a part of the suite.  In my case, I simply started using OneNote January 1st while I kept my notes in Evernote simply so I could avoid this problem.  Microsoft it seems has heard this dilemma from a lot of people and on Friday announced a new Evernote import tool for OneNote.