Category: Google Drive

For those of you who use WhatsApp for your voice and messaging needs, backup up those chats is going to be a lot easier in the coming weeks.  Google announced that an update to WhatsApp is going to allow users to back up their content to their Google Drive account, making sure those important chats, messages, videos and images shared on the app are not lost.  The update is rolling out over the course of the next few weeks so if you don’t see the option in your WhatsApp settings, it will be there soon.

WhatsApp for Android – Free – Download Now

Over the course of the past month I have been in the process of trying and slowly migrating to the Google suite of Office apps:  Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides.  It started as an experiment to see if it would hold up to the compared to Office 2013, up until now, my main Office suite.  I have to say, for my work and what I need out of these applications, they work amazingly well and the transition has not been nearly as painful as I expected it would when I started this little science fair project.  In fact, it’s to the point now that I probably won’t go back for 99% of what I need to do.  Indeed this weekend I plan on uninstalling Office 2013 from my laptop because for that 1% of the time where I need something extraordinary, I can simply use Office online.

Is it the right thing to do for you?  That’s a personal decision but here is how the migration has gone for me.

This will be the first of a multi-part series I’m writing on migrating to the Google suite of Office apps.  This first part is going to cover the setup and foundation of getting your files migrated to Google Drive, setting up for offline work and using Chrome extensions.  Part 2 is going to cover Google Docs on a desktop PC, a Chromebook and the mobile apps.  Part 3 will do the same for Google Sheets while the final part will cover Google Slides.

The cloud storage app Google Drive has been updated for Android devices, bringing with it several performance improvements along with improvements to the built-in PDF viewer.  The update, version 2.2.182.17.35 for those keeping score at home, is available now for all Android devices.

Google has indicated in the release notes that this update to Google Drive brings performance and interface improvements.  In my testing of this update this morning, the update appears to have solved some lagging performance.  I have not noted any interface improvements but it could simply be that Google is referring to these performance improvements of the interface and not changes to the interface itself.  Regardless, it does appear that the update makes the app a bit more snappy in performance on my BLU VIVO IV.

Google Drive for Android – Free – Download Now