On the Google Apps blog, the company has announced that a wider range of file export formats are coming to both Google Sheets and Google Slides in an update to both Android apps released today. The apps already allow exporting to popular formats such as Excel, PowerPoint and PDF but these new updates bring new formats that could be helpful if you are needing to send files to colleagues who don’t use the Google apps.
The rebirth of Google+ continues with another update coming to the social & community site app for Android. This latest update, version 7.5.0 for those keeping score at home, was announced by Googler Luke Wroblewski on his Google+ page and amongst the bug fixes in the update, there are also new feature to retry failed posts in the app. In all, there are 34 specific bugs fixed in this release and 12 additional accessibility issues that are addressed so the team is certainly knocking them out at a pretty good clip.
The Project Fi app for Android has been updated with a new but important diagnostics tool for the Fi team. When you update the app and go to the Privacy settings, you will note a new Network Diagnostics toggle which will send information about your cell tower connectivity and location to Google. The idea is for Google to collect information so they can improve the service and network quality.
When you go to Privacy settings at the bottom of the app, you will see this new feature with a description of what it is doing exactly. “Automatically send cell tower info and approximate location history to Project Fi from your phone to help improve network quality”
Google Search is getting a much needed and impressive voice makeover on your Android devices. Gone is the somewhat broken English and in is a much smoother voice read back experience on your search results. The update appears to be a combination of a back-end upgrade on Google’s side along with an update to the Google Text-to-Speech app and a new version of that app is in the Google Play Store that should be pushing out to everyone over the course of the next few days.
The Google Movies & TV store (off the Google Play Store) has a great promotion running now through April 28th on a movie rental from the store. Selecting from a wide range of movies, you can get 75% off of a single rental in that time frame for a evening in and a night away from Netflix. There is no special code or anything required. All you need to do is select from the list of movies that are a part of the promotion and you will get 75% taken off of that rental when you check out.