Tag: App Update

The Skype app for Android has been update with full support for Android Nougat as well as a host of other fixes and improvements.  The updated build is version 7.14 for those keeping score at home and if you have the messaging app installed already, you should see the OTA update come to your phone or tablet over the course of the next few days.  While support for the latest version of Android is great, that really isn’t the banner item in this update.  Rather, it is a number of user related issues that the team addressed as well as cross-app suggested contacts.

The suggested contacts gives you suggestions on contacts you can reach through Skype from other Skype apps.  For example, if you have Skype for Business installed on your phone, you can now see suggested contacts for your business contacts in Skype.  You can have this setting set to automatically add your contacts or you can manually add them.

Today marks the first anniversary of the release of OnHub, the home router that aimed at making Wi-Fi connectivity easy.  Beyond this though, OnHub was positioned with its antenna array and other features as being a potential hub for home automation and Internet of Things (IoT) integration.  To date, that promise has gone largely unfulfilled with the exception of IFTTT support a few months ago.  That is changing today with an announcement from the team at Google that OnHub is now partnered with Phillips so you can control your Hue lights with your OnHub.

Today, we’re celebrating OnHub’s first birthday and announcing a new partnership with Philips Lighting, the first connected home device you can control directly with OnHub. We know people don’t like having too many apps on their phones, so we made it possible to control your home’s Philips Hue lights without downloading an app. Now anyone connected to your OnHub can type “On.Here” in a computer, tablet, or mobile browser and control the most popular features of your Philips Hue lights from there. Crank up the party lights!

It’s is a great addition to see to the router and hopefully is a sign of things to come.

A small but important update has rolled out on Google Photos online.  The update now has burst photos that you have taken from your phone or tablet and have sync’d to the cloud rendered as a group of photos and not individual photos.  The change follows an update to the Google Photos Android and iOS apps a few weeks back where the same functionality was introduced.  Now you will get the same viewing experience across the web and your devices of burst photos.

Microsoft has rolled out a nice update to the Microsoft Office suite of apps for Android.  Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Android have all been updated to build 16.0.7301.1013 for those keeping score at home and bring with it some improvements around file sharing and collaboration.  In fact, in the release notes for each of the apps, Microsoft points out that collaboration is now “front and center” for each of the apps.  So what does that mean?  It means that you can now easily and quickly find documents that have been shared with you in the new “Shared with me” section of the menu.  Here you can see files others have shared with you from their PC, Mac, iOS device or Office online when they used the “invite people” option on a document.  It is a faster way of finding those files without having to search through the app to find that document. This collaboration also means that you can quickly share a document and have the ability to see who is working on it in the Android apps.

Google Wallet isn’t dead and, in fact, has just received a pretty nice update.  The update that is rolling out in the Play Store now allows you to have funds you receive in your wallet to be automatically transferred to your bank account.  This new feature is far faster than the cash out process that use to be your only option in the app.  Now, once you have an account associated with Google Wallet, any time you receive funds, you can have them go to your bank account and be there usually within 2-3 days (your mileage will vary based on your bank).

The PayPal app for Android has been updated with full support of the Android Fingerprint API.  That addition to the app means that you can use your fingerprint to sign into the app instead of having to use a PIN.  The app, this point, has supported the Samsung Fingerprint API which was to the benefit of Samsung device owners.  Now that they have moved over to the Android API, anyone with a fingerprint reader on their device will be able to sign into the app with it.

The setup of your fingerprint in the app is pretty easy and I’ll cover that after the break.