Tag: Google

With Android Nougat now only weeks away from release, developers are starting to prepare their apps for support of the release.  Google is no exception and the latest update to their clock and alarm app, Google Clock, is squarely aimed at getting it ready for Nougat.  The update, which is in the Play Store now, also works on Lollipop and Marshmallow but a lot of the focus is on Nougat to be fair.  In fact, the first thing noted in the Release Notes is support for Nougat.  With that support comes support for multi-screen, the new feature that will come in the release that allows you to view more than one app at a time.  Google Clock will support that natively so you can setup timers or alarms while working on with another app.

If you run a business or are responsible for creating Financial Statements, life just got a little bit easier for you.  The Google Apps team has announced that a new Financial Statement template is available in Google Sheets, both for the web and mobile versions of the app.  The template comes from the accounting software company Xero and is designed to take your inputs and generate the statements.

Simply access the Financial statements template from the Sheets homescreen, and get started by entering and categorizing your business transactions. The template will automatically update charts and graphs illustrating your company’s sales, expenses, revenue, and more.

This template should speed things up a lot of Google Sheets users who need to make these financial statements.

Here in the United States, we are in the throws of election season.  In November the Presidential election happens along with some House of Representatives seats, Senate seats and countless local elections.  A fundamental right in the United States is the right to vote and regardless of where you stand on a particular candidate or issue, exercising that right is key to making the country work. As my father always told me, “I don’t care who you vote for, but vote.”  But figuring out where and how to register to vote can be tricky.  That’s where Google comes in and helps simplify things.  Now you can simply type in “Register to vote” in Google Search on your phone and all of the details on how to register for your state will be displayed.

Chrome OS users, there is a new Stable Channel build of the OS available to the majority of devices.  The update is already rolling out to devices so you should see the update soon or you can do a manual check for it.  The updated build is version 51.0.2704.106 (Platform version: 8172.62.0) for those keeping score at home and it is available on a vast majority of devices.  However, if you have a Lenovo ThinkPad 11e Chromebook or a Samsung Chromebook Series 5 device, the update is not available for you.  Having specific devices listed as not receiving the update is nothing new.  Google and the Chrome OS team often call out a specific device or two that won’t see the update immediately.  Often these updates come later to these devices.

Like clockwork, Google has released the July Android Security updates for the platform, with both OTA and full factory images now available.  Interestingly, Google has split this month’s update into two different patches.  The first patch, dated July 1, is the most critical and broad reaching.  It includes two critical patches and 11 high priority patches for Android.  In all there are 22 fixes in this patch.  The second patch, dated July 5, contains several more fixes but is more specific to drivers and specific devices.  This patch has 7 critical patches and 19 high priority patches.  So why split them up?  Google is trying to get manufactures to update their devices faster and with the first patch being more broad its fixes, the hope is manufactures will get these updates out faster.  This will in turn give them time to do testing of the second patch (which may or may not be applicable to their devices anyway) for distribution as a separate patch or even a roll up into August.

For those of you who use Google Weather on your Android phone, there is a small but nice update that has happened behind-the-scenes for the feature.  In addition to the hourly temperature forecasts, you also now get a wind and precipitation forecast in the information card.  If you aren’t familiar with what I’m referring to as Google Weather, it is something that is found on phones by simply doing a search for weather on your phone.  When you do that, your phone will pull up the local weather information in an applet that launches in Google Search.  While there is nothing to install, you can have the applet store your weather information for other cities too.