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If you have a Chromecast, you know that there are some great photos that the device scrolls through while sitting idle. Sure you can point it to your own photos but some of the default ones are just spectacular. Now you can download them to your PC or Mac to enjoy thanks to Alex Meub.

Alex has put together a blog post that has all of the Chromecast photos available for your to download to your computer to use as a wallpaper. While the blog post hasn’t been updated in over a year, the vast majority of the wallpapers are there – and there are hundreds to download on the site.  All of the photos are credited to the photographer who took them but you can download them

for free to use.

In that moment of horror, you drop your phone.  It’s all in slow motion as you see your beloved device fly from your hands…

In a puddle…

Of water….

You see a bright rainbow of colors and then darkness on the screen. Your phone, your beloved extension of your physical body, is dead.

Fortunately for you however you purchased Nexus Protect on your new Nexus 6P, or Amazon protect on that phone you bought on Amazon so you breath a sigh of relief knowing that beyond a minimal deductible, you won’t have to shell out much for a new phone.  So you go through the process of filing a claim and then you are asked for your phone’s IMEI number.  Then that sinking feeling in your stomach hits again.  You know how to get to your IMEI number on your device but it’s dead.  How do you get it without the device being alive?

Fortunately Google has made it pretty easy through your Google Dashboard that is tied to your account.

The Google Dashboard provides you a wealth of information and the best way to think of it is how you interact with Google services and how Google sees you.  The dashboard is were you will find your privacy settings, your security settings, the number of apps you have installed (and purchased) and information about your devices.  Any device you have ever tied to your Google account will be in the dashboard and in the scenario above, that is golden information.

If you are a developer, regardless if it is on Android, iOS or Windows Phone, there are guidelines.  Those guidelines tell developers how things are to function in their app, how things are to be laid out and how big things are suppose to be in it.  The idea is to provide a uniform user experience regardless of the app the user happens to be in at the time.  Google, when it comes to Android, is no different but when it comes to the guidelines around icon sizes in the launcher, developers haven’t always adhered to the rules.  So Google is forcing the issue.  In the latest update to the Google Now launcher and the Google Search app, icon sizes are uniform thanks to a change in the software the reduces the size of larger-than-they-should-be icons.

With the update, which is rolling out now to the Google Play Store, regardless of the size of the icon that the developer has created for their app, the Google Now launch will enforce a size limit on it, shrinking it down to the guideline sizes per the design guide.  If it sounds draconian, it is a little bit but to be fair Google isn’t doing anything that Apple or Microsoft doesn’t do already.  For their part, Apple will simply reject your app if your icon is larger than it should be and the same holds true for Microsoft.  Google has been a bit more lax on it to this point but it would seem those days are over.

So why as an end user would you care?  Aesthetics mostly but also by having icons a uniform size, it lowers the chance of you accidentally “side touching” an icon when you meant to open the app next to it.

Google has started rolling out an update to Android Pay that should hit your device in the next day or two.  The update, version 1.2 for those keeping score at home, is a minor update but it does have one significant feature that you will want to have available to you.  If you recall, back in December I told you about apps you may have on your phone being able to leverage Android Pay for payments.  That list of apps was pretty long and included apps like Lyft, OpenTable and ParkMe Parking.  The update today to Android Pay is important because now you will get receipts in the app for those in-app purchases.

Essentially the receipts act like the do if you use Android Pay at a physical store.  When you make a purchase using it within an app, a receipt for that transaction is associated with the credit or debit card that you used to pay for it.  The idea of course is you have one place to go to see a history of all your transactions.  There is nothing you as a user need to do other than update to this latest version to enable this feature.  It is a back end change along with the app.

Android Pay – Free – Download Now