Author: Clinton

Joining the ranks of several other retailers, the Microsoft Store is now offering the new Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ for pre-order.  The unlocked variants of both phones will start shipping on March 16th, like other retailers.  The S9 is priced at $719.99 while the S9+ is $839.99.

The addition of these new Samsung phones falls in line with what the company did with the S8 last year, offering it as a pre-order.  With the S7, they made a “Microsoft version” of the phone that came with several of the company’s apps pre-installed.

As to be expected, the dominant Android news this week has been the release of the first developer preview for Android P.  While the code is still considered alpha and not near completion, you can already pick out areas of important changes in the upcoming release.

One minor change that has surfaced is a slightly revamped Pixel Launcher.  The Pixel Launcher was introduced with the original Pixel phones and Android Nougat.  It was tweaked slightly on the Pixel 2 lineup and Oreo and appears again to be set for a minor tweak with Android P and, presumably, the Pixel 3 lineup.  But you can try it out today on any phone.

YouTube TV, the television streaming service, has updated their available networks page with some exciting new content coming soon.  The changes indicate that Local Now, a local news service, will be added to subscriptions at no additional cost.  Perhaps more exciting is that NBA League Pass and MLB.tv is coming soon too.

Both sports networks will be coming to YouTube TV at some point this year and both are listed as add-on networks.  That means there will be a monthly fee associated with each network but, for NBA and MLB fans, you’ve already been paying it anyway.  This should simplify life.

While Chrome OS is very efficient at managing memory and processes, it, like everyone Operating System, needs to be restarted from time-to-time.  For Chromebook users that has meant that you have to power down your device completely then fire things back up.  Doing so empties cached items in memory and kills off PIDs (Process Identifiers) so things run smoothly again.

But there are times when you are in the middle of working on things where a quick restart button would be handy.  Natively, there is not such a button in Chrome OS but in this How To, I’ll show you how you can quickly create one and have it in your browser favorites bar for quick access.

File this one under the “Finally” category.  Gmail for Android is finally getting inbox type sorting.  The ability to filter your inbox based on a number of criteria has been available on the web and in the iOS version of the app but had never made it into the Android build.  That is changing with an update to the Gmail rolling out over the course of the next week or so to bring the feature to users.

What is inbox type support?  When available, you will be able to sort your inbox on a number of criteria including unread messages, important messages, stared messages and priority inbox.  When you enable one of these, that message type is bubbled up to the top of your Gmail view on your phone so you can deal with them first.  The most common use is unread messages so you would see all of them first, then your read messages below it.

Google has brought a new feature to their consumer video calling app, Google Duo.  The new feature is video messaging.  Now when you call someone using the app and they do not answer (or declines your call), you can leave up to a 30 second video message for them.  You can also leave them a voice only message if you prefer.

If you receive a video message in Google Duo, all you need to do is tap their avatar in the app.  The message will then be played and you can tap the Call Now button to call them back.