Tag: Google

If you are willing to do a little work and link some accounts, Disney has a great deal for you.  Right now if you download the Disney Movies Anywhere app for Android, sign up and then link an account, you will get a free copy of Monsters, Inc. added to your account.  If you aren’t familiar with the app, it serves as a central repository for all movies from Disney, from animated classics to the modern remake of The Jungle Book.  You buy movies through the app and they are purchased through whatever app store you have linked to the app.  Then the movie appears in the Disney Movies Anywhere app and in the linked accounts movies.  So for example, I linked my Google account to the Disney app and my Microsoft account.  When I make a purchase of a movie through the app, that movie appears in both my Google and my Microsoft accounts.  I don’t have to repurchase!

The Google Search team has added two fun games to Search that you can start playing immediately without any downloads.  On your Android phone, type in Solitaire or tic tac toe and you can immediately start playing the classic games right from within the Search results.  The new additions are just the latest in a series of app-like functionality within the Search app.  Previously information on the US election was added and more recently, detailed information about the Olympics in Rio were just a search away.  Games are nothing new either. You have been able to search flip a coin and get a coin toss from within search results too.  Now you have two more to play.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai took to Twitter last night and provided an important update to everyone:  Google Duo has hit the 5 million download mark.  The new video calling app was released the same day as Android Nougat and frankly is a pretty refined experience versus other video calling solutions.  Duo gives you a preview of who is calling before you even accept the call.

Google Duo now over 5M Android downloads in a week! https://t.co/ctwn131gYq

— sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) August 25, 2016

While 5 million isn’t exactly huge when you compare it to the hundreds of millions of Android phones and iPhones out there, it is significant in that there is some excitement around this new video app.

Great news and yet another reason to pick up a Nexus phone.  The Nexus team at Google has announced that Wi-Fi Assistant is coming to all Nexus phones in the coming weeks.  Wi-Fi Assistant to this point has been exclusive to Project Fi users which allows their devices to automatically connect to Google approved Wi-Fi hotspots securely and without any user intervention.  It is a huge benefit to Fi frankly as it saves on data plan usage.  It will connect your phone to Wi-Fi without you even knowing it.  Now all Nexus owners will benefit from the feature.

Update – OTA for the Nexus 5X, Nexus 9 and Pixel C are now rolling out to devices.

Wow!  That was fast!  It dropped on the world an hour ago and now the Android Nougat OTA updates are already starting to roll out.  Multiple people, including me, have been notified that the update is available on their devices.  In my case, I’ve received the update notification on my Nexus 6 and Nexus 6P but I have not received it yet on my Nexus 9 tablet.  I suspect that Google is slow rolling things at the minute.

As I put in my review of Nougat, this is an evolution of Android and not necessarily a revolutionary update.  However, there are a lot of nice improvements to the Notification Shade, power management, emergency information and a lot more.  It is a good, solid update for sure.

With the NFL season just a few weeks away, the wait and anticipation of the new season is palatable across most of America.  To help you pass the time and to live out your digital football fantasy, EA Sports has released this years update to Madden NFL Mobile.  The game builds on the already successful franchise on mobile devices and tweaks some features and adds a few new ones for better game play.  Some of those new features include a Quarterback Scramble so you can have your QB tuck the ball in and run for that 1st down.  There are over 50 new offense plays in the game and the ability to build a defensive game plan for your next game.