Google Home Down to $99 Tomorrow

If you have been wanting to pick up a Google Home, tomorrow is the day to do it.  Tomorrow, November 23rd, you will be able to pick the Google Assistant powered smart speaker for just $99 at Google’s Store as well as Best Buy.  The sale is going to be limited to tomorrow and Google is indicating there will be limited quantities.  If you are wanting to get one, you need to jump on it quickly as at that price, they will sell pretty fast.

Home has been doing well by all indicates and while it certainly has some limitation on what it can do currently, you can see where Google wants to go with it as a centerpiece of the “AI first” movement.  Having had a Home in my office for a few weeks now (review coming later this week), I’ve found it be very handy and helpful with things but equally, I’ve bumped into some limitations that I hope are addressed soon.

OnePlus 3T Now Available Starting at $439

After being announced a couple of weeks ago, the new OnePlus 3T is now available for you to order.  The flagship device brings some nice improvements and updates from the OnePlus 3 including a 128GB storage option.  Powered by the Snapdragon 821 processor quad-core processor, the 5.5″ phone comes with 6GB of RAM and starts with 64GB of onboard storage.  The 64GB model starts at $439 and is available in Gunmetal Grey and Soft Gold (currently not in stock).  If you want the 128GB model, that is $479 and is only available in the Gunmetal grey color.  Both storage sizes are in stock and orders today are shipping and arriving by November 29th according to my order.

Today’s Deal – LG G5 Down to $399 on Amazon

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the solidly built and performing LG G5.  This 5.3″ display device with 32GB of storage and 4GB of RAM is down from it’s normal price of $649.99 to $399.99 on Amazon.  This is a great price on this phone and certainly should be one to consider if you are looking for a top-end phone at a mid-market price.  The G5 is powered by the Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor and coupled with the Adreno 530 GPU.  It has 4GB of RAM which is going to be enough to really do anything with this phone and has 32GB of onboard storage.  That storage can be expanded up to an additional 2TB (that’s right, 2 terabytes) thanks to the MicroSD card slot.

Camera wise, you have dual rear cameras in the LG G5 that give you 16MP images with laser auto-focus and OIS (Optical Image Stabilization).  It has a 2-stage LED flash while the front facing camera is an 8MP shooter with a nice 135 degree wide angle view.

LG G5 on Amazon

OneNote App Update Brings Accessibility Enhancements

Microsoft has begun rolling out a nice update to OneNote, bringing several fixes along with some key updates for those with accessibilities needs.  In the update, users can now have alternative text on images and embedded files in a page.  That means for those who cannot see images, they can have alternative text which can be read to them by recognition software.  This has been a common practice in web design for many years (in fact, every image on ClintonFitch.com has alternative text) and it is good to see it come to a productivity app like OneNote for those who need it.

That’s not the only change of course.  There is now the ability to view images outside of OneNote itself.  Now when you tap on an image in a note, you can choose to open that in another app to view that image.  To this point, once you embedded an image, you had to view it within OneNote.  Also, related to this, you can view embedded files outside of OneNote too.

4K Movies Start Appearing in Google Play Movies

With the Chromecast Ultra starting to ship out, Google is starting to ramp up support for Ultra HD (4K) videos in the Google Play Movies & TV app.  A check of the store this morning shows that several movies are now available in UHD as well as the already offered HD and SD versions.  The number of movies will only increase as Google licenses out the UHD versions from the production studios and makes them available to end users.

But, if you have the Chromecast Ultra and a 4K television, be prepared to pay for these UHD versions.  In my research this morning, nearly every movie in UHD was twice the price of the HD version.  For example, one of my all time favorite movies, The Fifth Element, is $12.99 in HD but it is $24.99 in UHD.  Also, if you already own the HD version of the movie, there is no option for now to upgrade to UHD – at least for now.

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