Category: Android

Google Translate has an update rolling out for Android that brings instant translation to and from Japanese to English.  Now you can point your phone’s camera to a book, sign or other text in English and it will instantly translate it to Japanese on your phone or vise versa.  It brings the total number of instant translation languages to 30 in the app of the 103 languages available.

Instant translations come into play best when you are in a country with a supported language and need help with signs as you navigate around a city.  Depending on the country, like Japan where the dialect is vastly different than English, that can be challenging which is where Google Translate really shines.

As previously announced, Google+ has begun enabling Events in the community app.  It is still in the process of rolling out but for many, Events are now showing up both on the web and the Android app.  You will know if you have received the behind-the-scenes update if you go to Google+ on your phone and tap the menu.  If it has come to your account, you will see events.

As the name suggests, Events allows you to create events either at a location or on Hangouts to your circles or public on Google+.  You can create the event, add dates and times and select who you want to invite and it will show up as an event to attend.  If you invite a select circle, they will be notified via the app while the public will have it appear in the timeline of the community feed.

Slow but surely, Google Home is getting smarter.  Today the Home team announced that support for smart home devices from Belkin and Honeywell could now be controlled by the smart speaker-Google Assistant infused device.  Belkin Wemo and Honeywell both make a wide range of smart home accessories that are Wi-Fi enabled such as thermostats, light switches, electrical plugs and webcams.  Now you can add these to you Google Home in the Home Control section of the app and as long as everything is on the same network, you can set it up to be controlled by Google Home.

When Home was launched last year, Google was clear that more partners would be coming to the device and more integrations would be coming.  So far we’ve seen Netflix added from an app perspective as well as a huge number of bots to get information from various resources.  With the addition of Belkin and Honeywell, from a smart home perspective, you are no longer just tied to Nest.

Netflix has made a few big changes to their Android app these last few months.  First came the ability to download movies and TV shows to your phone or tablet for viewing offline.  Now, and equally as important for some, today’s update brings the ability to store that offline content on an SD card.  The update is version 4.13.0 Build 14540 for those keeping score at home and it is rolling out now in the Play Store.  Once you have the update, when you want to download a movie or show, you will be asked where you want to store that content.  Select your SD card if your phone has one and off you go.  The content is downloaded to your card instead of your device’s main storage.

Today’s Deal is on a well appointed new tablet from Huawei.  The MediaPad M3 is their latest offering and the 8.4″ tablet sports 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and a 2560 x 1600 pixel IPS display for $299.  To make this an even sweeter deal, the M3 has Harmon Kardon tuned sound so you should have a great media experience with it on top of the great overall specs.  The new tablet from Huawei was announced in November and hit the Amazon digital shelves in December.  If you are an Amazon Prime customer, shipping is free.

The MediaPad M3 is powered by the Octa-Core Kirin 950 processor running at 2.3GHz and it is coupled with the Mali-T880 MP4 GPU.  This combination should do great for everyday use and you have plenty of RAM to support the processor which always helps.

I am apologetically addicted to skiing.  I love tech and my career but at 9 times out of 10, if you ask me what I’m thinking about, I’m going to tell you skiing.  2017 has been a great season for me so far and like many skiers and riders, I want to keep track of where I’ve been, how fast I’ve gone and how many vertical feet I’ve skied in a day.  One of the best and most complete apps for this is Snocru.  The app allows you to track all of these statistics for the day and does it in a battery friendly way.  Snocru also lets you link up with friends who are skiing with you so you can compare stats and share that information with each other or on social networks like Facebook.

I’ve been using the app for the past few weeks to track my skiing and it has quickly become a must-have app for me.  If you are a skier or snowboarder, you will probably find it a must-have app too.