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Now that Google I/O has wrapped up for 2018, Android and Google fans are starting to turn their attention to the next hardware event for the Mountain View company.  Rumors are already starting to fly about the upcoming Google Pixel 3 phone series but a new rumor yesterday suggests that we could finally see a Pixel Watch in the mix too.

Wear OS by Google has, much like Android, needed a hero device to show the ultimate experience of what the platform can bring.  It is something I wrote about shortly after the name change from Android Wear and it looks like that could be happening.

It has taken a while, a lot longer than it should have frankly, but Google Home is now finally able to start up a movie or television show from Google Play Movies & TV.  The feature quietly snuck into Home and Google Assistant this week during Google I/O and didn’t get a lot of fanfare but it closes a loop in Google’s support of their own products.

If you have a Google Home and you have movies or television shows you have rented or purchased in Play Movies & TV, you can now ask Google Assistant to play a movie in your account to a Chromecast device in your home.  It works just like it does with Netflix and other services that are already supported by Home & Assistant.

The new Gmail Smart Compose feature that was announced at Google I/O earlier this week has now gone live as an experimental feature in the new user experience for the service.  Once enabled, you will be able to use Smart Compose as you write emails and can use the suggested text of the email by simply tapping the tab button on your keyboard.

The feature is aimed to make writing emails faster and Google is using AI to look at the content of the email to determine what to suggest next.  It is similar to the Smart Replies found in other Google products, only it is more real time.  To enable it, go to Settings>General in the new Gmail experience and enable Experimental access.  Save your settings and then start composing an email.  You will see the Smart Compose option start providing suggestions as you type your new email.

One of the great features of the Apple Watch is the Activity app.  It is an app that keeps track of your movement calories, your exercise and the standing you do each hour in one easy-to-use app.  It is the measurement of these activities that allow you to complete the now well known rings each day.

When it comes to calorie targets, it is the one metric that users can adjust.  The standing once per hour and 30 minutes of exercise, at least for now, are fixed and can’t be adjusted.  The calorie one however is probably the more important one anyway.  Depending on your lifestyle and even your profession, you may want to set your calorie burn goal higher than the minimum 300 calories target.  You’ll know this is the case if you are consistently going over your current target by two or three times in a day.  One day is a one-off but consistently blowing through that target means it needs to be adjusted up.

In this How To I’ll show you a quick way that you can adjust your calorie target in the middle of a day or week.  Once you adjust it, it will be your goal going forward until you adjust it again and it will be reflected in your target measurements for the week you are in.