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Today over at Amazon you can pick up a great deal on the Acer Chromebook 14.  Right now this all aluminum chassis Chromebook is available with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for $270.  That price is good on either the aluminum or the gold aluminum finish and is eligible for Prime shipping for members.

This Acer Chromebook is powered by a Intel Celeron N3160 processor running at 1.6GHz and the display renders at 1920 x 1080 full HD.  As mentioned already, it has 4GB of RAM which is really handy on a Chromebook and has 32GB of storage for those things (like Android apps) that you need to store locally.  It also has a built-in battery that is rated to give 12 hours of life between charges.  Overall it is a great package and one of the higher rated Chromebooks out there right now.

Google Maps is in the process or rolling out a location sharing feature that you may actually want to use.  Location Sharing is something that has been a bit spotty for both Android and iOS with Apple probably having it figured out best with Find My Friends.  But, as is usually the case with Apple, it is only for fellow iOS users.  That is why this new feature in Google Maps is so exciting.  It works cross platform between Android and iOS.

In a nutshell, here is how it works.  When the feature rolls out to you, there will be a Share Location feature in the menu.  Tap it then select the contacts you want to see your location in real time.  You can set it up to share your location in real time for a set amount of time or until you turn the feature off.  Once you start sharing, your selected contacts will get a notification on their phone and when they open up Google Maps, they will be able to see where you are in real time.

T-Mobile continues to be one of the best carriers in the US when it comes to device updates.  The latest proof point is the 2015 HTC One M9.  The carrier has released the Android Nougat update for customers who have the phone on their network.  The update is based on Nougat 7.0 and has the January Android Security Update.  It comes some two months after the unlocked One M9 received the Nougat treatment.

The update is just over 1GB in size so those of you with the One M9 will want to download it via Wi-Fi and you can expect the total download and upgrade time to take about 30 minutes.  Once you get it installed, you’ll have all the Nougat niceties along with some improvements to HTC’s Sense UI.

Like many readers, I travel a lot and often times I’m trying to charge my Nexus 6P at the airport.  More airports today have seats with USB ports on them so even if you can’t find an electrical outlet, you can still get charged up before or between flights.  The trick, however, is how much you use your phone while it is charging.  We all know that using your phone while it is charging increases the charging time.  But by how much?  Wouldn’t it be great to see how much your phone is consuming energy as you charge it?  Enter the Choetech Current Voltage Monitor cable.

The Current Voltage Monitor cable allows you to see how much voltage is running to your phone as it charges and equally, how many amps are being consumed by your phone to charge it.  Not only will you see how your usage is impacting the charging time, you will see if that USB port in that chair at the airport is only putting out 2-3v instead of 5v which also slows down charging time.  Recently the team at Choetech sent me one of these cables to review and its quite handy having this knowledge in the palm of your hand.  Here’s my review of this handy little accessory.