Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has released their 2nd Quarter Financial Year 2016 results today and they are nothing short of impressive. The company showed impressive growth over the same quarter last year with revenue topping out at $21.5 billion that created a $5.86 billion net income (non-GAAP). The revenue growth is up 21% over the same quarter last year while net income was up $1.1 billion.
One of the big benefits of Google Now is getting travel time information to your next appointment. It is really handing in planning your journey time as it takes into account things like travel time itself but also things like traffic on along your route thanks to its Google Maps integration. That travel time can be adjusted depending on your mode of transportation: Car, bike, bus or public transit or walking and, in some place, car sharing services like Uber.
There is another small but important feature that this service in Now offers and that is the ability to adjust your arrival time regardless of your transportation mode. I, for example, generally like to be at a meeting place about 5 minutes before the actual start time of the meeting. Old habits die hard, what can I say? Within the travel time information in Google Now, you can adjust when you want to arrive at your destination which, in turn, adjust the time in which you need to leave. In this How To, I’ll show you how to tweak this little feature so you can show up at the time you want to show up for your next appointment.
Google has released the much anticipated Google Play Family Library for users. Starting today, you can have up to six members of your family share eligible apps, movies, TV shows or books at no additional cost. All you have to do is sign up and register the email addresses of your family members so they can start sharing content.
Today’s families have a lot of devices, and it should be easy to share content no matter where we are or what we’re doing. Everyone in my family loves the Star Wars movies and we all want to be able to watch them, on our phones, tablets, laptops, or TV. All purchases added to Family Library are available across Android devices, and movies, TV shows, and books can be enjoyed on iOS devices and the web.
For families, this will be a big savings as there is no need to duplicate purchases or, and perhaps worse, share accounts to get to the content that you have purchased.
The Chromium team has released a sizable update to Chrome OS this morning, bringing with it several enhancements and improvements to the platform. The updated build is version 52.0.2743.85 (Platform version: 8350.60.0) for those keeping score at home and it is available for all devices running the Operating System. The update is already rolling out (I have received it on my HP Chromebook 11 G4 already) and you can check for it by going to Settings>About Chrome OS>Check for Update.
If you have used Google Maps the last day or two and things look different, you aren’t imagining things. The Maps team has been rolling out a significant update behind-the-scenes for the app for Android and the web that has a much improved color pallet and new highlight areas of interest on the maps. The good thing is this update is all happening on Google’s end. There is no app to update on your side. As the improved maps roll out to all users, you will just see it on your account.
The biggest change is really around the color pallet and the removal of things like black lines around roads. This makes viewing maps much easier and cleaner than the old maps.
The world is full of information, which means highlighting necessary info on the map without overcrowding it is a balancing act. So as part of this update, we’ve removed elements that aren’t absolutely required (like road outlines). The result is a cleaner look that makes it easier to see helpful and actionable information like traffic and transit. And we’ve improved the typography of street names, points of interest, transit stations, and more to make them more distinguishable from other things on the map, helping you navigate the world with fewer distractions.
In a practical sense, this means that viewing Google Maps will be easier on a lot of levels: clearer text, less clutter and easier identification.
After being available to a limited number of users, the new Internet Speed Test feature built into Google Search is now available to the rest of us unwashed masses. There is no app update required but you should be able to go to Google search on your Android phone or tablet and type in “Internet Speed Test” and get the option to use the feature. Once you tap the Run Speed Test button, a download and upload test of your internet connection will be started. Once it is completed, you’ll see the results of the test along with a description of what type of performance you can expect with apps or streaming content based on your connection speeds.
A new and exciting features for those who read comics in Google Play Books has begun rolling out to users. The new Bubble Zoom feature is designed to make reading the speech bubbles in a comic book much easier by automatically zooming in on those bubbles as you view the comic page.
Using the same technology to recognize objects in photos, we trained our system to identify speech bubbles in comics. Bubble zoom expands the speech bubbles of a comic one-tap-at-a-time, making them super easy to read on your mobile device. It’s much easier to read digital comics one-handed as Bubble Zoom automatically identifies and expands each speech bubble for readability. No more compromising the full-page experience or getting lost while panning around.
The feature was announced last week at the San Diego Comic-Con as Google continues to push to be a leading comic book platform for readers.
Microsoft has released another update to the Arrow Launcher for Android as they continue to address issues and add new, user requested features to the launcher. The latest version, build 2.1 for those keeping score at home, has extended the notification badge for more apps. Support for the notification badge now includes Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, QQ, and Skype. This mans that if you get a message from one of these apps, you will get a visual notification within Arrow Launcher like you do with email and other apps.