Author: Clinton

The social and community site Google+ continues its resurgence and today another update to the Android app for the site has been released.  Like many of the releases for the app over these past few months, this one is chock full of changes which most users will appreciate almost immediately.  The news originally came from Google’s Luke Wroblewski on his Google+ page where he outlined the changes in the release which has rolled out to the Google Play Store already.  You will be looking for version 7.2.0 for those keeping score at home and if you already have the app installed, an OTA update should be coming your way very soon.

Angry Birds 2, the sequel to the hugely popular original Angry Birds, has received another update today, bringing with it all new levels and… water?  That’s right, for the first time in the game you now have under water levels to contend with as you continue your pig popping efforts in the game.  As the story line goes, Oh noes! Cobalt Plateaus has been totally flooded! We’re going subaquatic in a new Chapter brimming with water and amphibious pigs. CANNONBALL!  So now when you get to the Cobalt Plateaus you not only have to deal with getting your aim right to destroy the evil pigs but you get to do it through water.

For all of you who are running Chrome OS, there is a minor (emphasis on minor) update available for you today.  The update was released late yesterday and takes the build version up to 48.0.2564.109 (Platform version: 7647.78.0).  If you remember a couple of weeks ago, the 48-train was released so no, this is note the Material Design-looking 49-train that you may have been reading about.  This, plain and simple, is a bug fix release.

Following up on notifications coming to Google Drive, Google has announced that their productivity apps, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, all have the ability to send you and you can control push notifications from the apps.  The update to the three Android apps will be rolling out to the Google Play Store and should come to your devices over the course of the next three days.  While push notifications themselves are not necessarily new to the productivity apps, how you control them is in this update.  Previously, if you did not want push notifications from Google Drive, Sheets or Slides, you could only deactivate that feature from Google Drive.  That is now no longer the case.

In an announcement made today, Microsoft and Acer have come to an agreement whereby a suite of the Redmond, Washington company’s apps will be pre-installed on selected Acer Android phones and tablets later this year.  While it is not clear which devices will see these apps installed, it was clear in the announcement which apps are involved.  Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote and OneDrive will be there along with Skype for voice and video communications.

Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said, “We’re pleased that we have been able to enhance the already strong partnership that exists between Microsoft and Acer. Mutually beneficial and collaborative agreements such as this one promote innovation and lead to better products and experiences for consumers.”

The announcement falls in line with the continued “mobile first” strategy of Microsoft who has continued to develop their Android apps at a feverish clip over the past 18 months.  Indeed the suite of apps now are almost on par with their desktop counterparts from a feature perspective while remaining free to download.  For all of the functionality the apps have to offer, customers will still need to sign up for Office 365 and this deal with Acer is no exception.

The Google Forms team announced today several enhancements to the online service.  If you aren’t familiar with Forms, it is a great free tool that allows you to create anything from a formal survey, a party invite RSVP list or even a feedback form.  It is a great tool that has a huge number of templates already pre-built for you to use.  You can check it out at http://forms.google.com.  That said, the team announced today that in addition to getting the overall responses to a form (which you have always been to do), you can now see individual responses from those who have replied.