Tag: Google

The Google Chrome team has launched an education and troubleshooting set of videos for Chromebooks and Chrome OS on their YouTube channel.  The videos, eight in all, cover a wide range of topics from setting up your Chromebook for the first time to troubleshooting Wi-Fi issues.  Each of the videos range from a couple of minutes to nearly 5 minutes depending on the topic.  While experienced Chromebook and Chrome OS users will find the videos to be basic, for those who are moving from a Windows PC or Mac, they can be a huge time saver when it comes to understanding their new device.

[Editors Note:  Due to the political nature of this post, no comments will be approved]

On Friday, January 20th, the United States will see the swearing in of our 45th President, Donald Trump.  Regardless of where you stand politically, the swearing in of a President is a big event and you will be able to stream it live on YouTube.  YouTube will give viewers live streams from multiple sources throughout the day including the swearing in ceremony and the inauguration speech of the President.  You can view those streams from any device.

As part of the coverage, some channels will be offering 360-degree views and 4K streaming.

Google Maps has a big update rolling out that brings a nicely integrated car sharing booking element to it.  The ability to see ride share services like Uber and Lyft has been in Maps for a while now but if you wanted to actually book an Uber, you had to go to the Uber app to do it.  No more.  Now you can link your Uber account to Google Maps and can book your ride right from within the app.  Further, you can see the location of your driver within the app and you don’t even have to have the Uber app installed on your phone for all this to work.

What you do need however is the latest build of Google Maps.  That is version 9.43.2 for those keeping score at home and it is currently rolling out to the Play Store.

Google Gboard for Android has just been updated with some significant performance improvements.  The update is still in the 6.0 train so if you have the app installed, the OTA should be coming to you over the course of the next few days.  Almost immediately you will feel the difference.  First, overall Gboard is much faster and more responsive to typing.  There isn’t the millisecond delays between you pressing a virtual key and it registering.  But perhaps a bigger improvement is around Glide Typing.  In this update I find there is virtually no lag or false positives of me picking up my finger when I don’t.  It is remarkably better in this release and if you use Glide Typing, you will want this update ASAP.

There has been a minor behind-the-scenes update to the Google Play Store that some users are seeing.  If you go to the Top Charts in the Store, some users are now seeing a “Show installed apps” toggle at the top of each page.  Enabling this allows you to either display or hide the apps from that chart that you already have installed.  The idea is to speed things up a bit by not having to wade through apps you already have installed.  You can simply hide them and see the other top apps you don’t have installed.

There is nothing that you need to do necessarily to get the update.  It will just appear for you once it hits your account.

Google has announced that they have acquired Lime Audio to boost their audio performance in Chromebox for Meetings and Google Hangouts.  The acquisition, of which the financial details were not released, will allow Google to improve the audio experience as more customers are turning to video and audio conferencing in their day-to-day operations.

One of the biggest challenges to a great video meeting is the audio quality. Conference rooms today come in all shapes and sizes and that can provide a challenge for acoustics. Additionally, a poor internet connection can hamper voice quality in video conference calls. Limes Audio has been building solutions that remove the distracting noise, distortion and echoes that can affect online video and telephony meetings, improving the overall online conference experience.

Based on the release about the acquisition, Google is going to be incorporating the Lime Audio technology in to Chromebox for Meetings and Google Hangouts.  When or how this will be done was not disclosed.