Google Maps Update Brings Hotel Room Photo Galleries

Google Maps has long had the ability for users to attach photos to locations like hotels and restaurants.  The idea is to give your fellow Maps user an idea of what that particular place looks like before they book it.  Now there is an improvement to this around hotels that users will find quite handy.  The latest update brings a dedicated photos gallery of rooms at a particular hotel.  Now you don’t have to go through all of the photos for a particular property.  You can just select the Rooms tab and it will show you pictures of the rooms.

The updated build is version 9.41.1 for those keeping score at home and the OTA update is rolling out now.  You should see it hit your device over the course of the next few days.

Today’s Deal – Anker Dual-Port USB Charger for $11

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on a handy accessory for home or when you are traveling.  The Anker dual-port USB wall charger allows you to charge two devices at once and works worldwide so it can be the once travel charger you carry with you.  Normally it is $19.99 but right now it is only $10.99 and they work with any Android device or an iPhone.  The charger has Anker’s PowerIQ and VoltageBoost maximize charging speed up to 2.4 amps per port.  It does not support Quick Charge but it will be efficient about charging your devices.

Chrome OS Update Rolling Out

The Chrome OS team has pushed out a small but important update out for the platform.  Build 54.0.2840.101 (Platform version: 8743.85.0) is available for all devices running the OS and should be hitting your Chromebook or other device over the course of the next few days.  You can, of course, always force the issue by typing in chrome://help in the browser bar and it will automatically go and look for the update for you.

As is very often the case, the Chromium team did not disclose exactly what was addressed or fixed in this update to the platform.  They usually limit the amount of information released to assure that hackers don’t know about it and exploit it until a large swath of devices are updated.  In this case, no information was released.  That either means this was truly a minor update and there was nothing worth mentioning or there was a major flaw and they will be mum about it until updates are complete.  Given that there is no indication further notes will be released later, I tend to think it is the former.

Google Allo Adds Fantastic Beasts Stickers!

There is a nice behind-the-scenes update coming to Google Allo that brings a smart emoji feature and stickers for the new movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them stickers that you can share with friends.  The updates are rolling out now and it could take a day or two before everyone sees them.  The first update, smart emoji, is pretty slick.  As you start typing, you can tap the Smart Smiley in the keyboard and it will give you suggested emoji for your message.  Even if you haven’t started typing, it will suggest emoji based on the context of your conversation (thank you Google Assistant and Machine Learning!).  The idea, of course, is to save time by using emoji but also to get you the right emoji for the conversation.

Today’s Deal – ASUS ZenFone Zoom $150 off at Amazon

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the powerful ASUS ZenFone Zoom.  This 5.5″ display device with a 13MP rear camera, 64GB of storage and unlocked phone is on sale today for $247.  That’s a savings of just over $150 from the normal $399 price.  For that price, this is a well spec’d phone.  It has an Intel 64-bit Quad-Core processoring running at 2.3GHz and coupled with 4GB of RAM.  Storage wise it has 64GB of storage built-in but can be expanded an additional 128GB thanks to the MicroSD slot.

The ZenFone Zoom, as the name suggests, has a 13MP camera with a 3x optical zoom on the rear camera.  Optical zooms are not completely unique but they aren’t found often on phones.  Having an Optical zoom provides much crisper images over software zooming.  The front camera on the Zoom is a 5MP shooter.

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