Category: Google

Today YouTube has launched the all new YouTube Music app.  This music centric app follows in the footsteps of other content specific apps like YouTube Kids and YouTube Gaming by providing music audio and video content in an clean and simple app that allows offline listening.  Tied in with the recently launched YouTube Red service, YouTube Music allows subscribers to view music videos, listen to music online or offline and has a powerful search function to find your favorite artist.  Further, you can setup your own stations (playlists) for the genre or artist you like most.

YouTube Music – Free (In-App Purchases) – Download Now

As a heavy user of Google services, there are a lot of settings and controls that are available to me to keep certain things private from the general public.  I for example have no problem with everyone knowing I live in the Denver, Colorado area but I don’t really want everyone to know my physical address.  I love you guys and all but….

Before now, you could go to the Google Accounts page and wade through all of the different security and privacy settings for your account and how things appear on Google+, YouTube and other Google sites.  Now the company has made it much easier to go and find those settings and adjust them.  This week they launched the Google About Me site, a single site that allows you to edit your personal information as well as privacy settings for virtually every setting on your Google account.  Google About Me is aimed to help you see all of your settings and information and give you the ability to quickly edit them instead of having to jump through hoops on the account page.

File this under “Not Shocked” but it is official:  Google is ending support of Chrome for Windows XP, Windows Vista and a handful of older Mac OS X versions.  The news came on the Chrome blog earlier today that starting in April 2016, they will no longer be updating and officially supporting these legacy OS’.

The news comes largely due to Apple and Microsoft not supporting these older versions themselves so Google is more-or-less following suit.

Chrome OS users, you have a new update available from Google.  On the Chrome OS blog today, Google announced that build 46.0.2490.82 (Platform version: 7390.68.0) is now available for all devices running the Operating System.  The update will push out to everyone soon but you can manually check for the update by going to Settings>About Chrome OS and tapping the Check for Update button.

Back in May at Google I/O, the company previewed offline navigation in Google Maps.  With this feature enabled, users would be able to download a map area and get turn-by-turn navigation to their destination even if they have no internet connection on their device.  Now six months later, the company is starting to roll the feature out to users.

You can download an area by searching for a city, county or country, for instance, and tapping “Download” on the resulting place sheet, or by going to “Offline Areas” in the Google Maps menu and tapping on the “+” button. Once downloaded, Google Maps will move into offline mode automatically when it recognizes you’re in a location with spotty service or no connectivity at all. When a connection is found, it will switch back online so you can easily access the full version of Maps, including live traffic conditions for your current route. By default, we’ll only download areas to your device when you are on a Wi-Fi connection to prevent large data fees.

The updated feature is great for those who may be traveling in a rural area where data connectivity is sketchy or for us urban dwellers, we are in a multi-story car park and have no connectivity available.

Google’s SMS/MMS app, Google Messenger, had received a minor update to address some bugs and other performance issues.  The update take the app to version 1.6.043 for those keeping score at home and for those who use the app, its an update to make sure you have, especially if you have had any strange issues with the app.

For those who aren’t familiar with Google Messenger, it is the Mountain View company’s answer to your texting needs on your Android phone that has a rich set of features including group chats and super easy photo and video sharing.  The app is beautifully done in a Material design so if you like the look of Android Lollipop and Marshmallow, you’ll love the design of this app.  You can read my full review of it here on the site.

Google Messenger – Free – Download Now