Right now at the Google Play Store, there is a huge sale going on a wide range of movies. You can pick up some great titles for as low as $5.99 in HD and as low as $3.99 in SD. There is a good mix of titles at are on sale from the recently released Zoolander No. 2, to the classic Matrix trilogy, the Taken series and all of the Fast and Furious series. If you have been wanting to bulk up your movie collection, now is the time.
HP, like many other traditional PC manufactures, is getting serious about Chrome OS. The company has announced the new Chromebook 11 G5, an 11.6″ Chromebook that will start at just $189 when it is released to partners this month and retailers in October. The new Chromebook 11 will be available with an optional touch screen display which, given that upcoming release of Android apps on Chrome OS, is something those of you in the market for a Chromebook should seriously consider. It will be powered by the Intel Celeron N3060 and likely will have configurable memory and storage options once it does hit the HP store. Equally, it was have an impressive 12.5 hours of battery life.
Google Plus, the social and community site from the Mountain View company, celebrates its 5th birthday today. The site and service was the 4th attempt by Google to bring forth a social networking site after Buzz, Friend Connect and Orkut all died. Plus is by far the longest lived of any attempt into this arena by Google and over the course of 2014 and 2015, it looked like it too would end up on the digital trash heap. But it hasn’t. Google continues to tweak on it both on the web and in apps for Android and iOS. It has evolved from a proper head-to-head competitor of Facebook and even Instagram to something different. Sure it has the elements of those services but it is really more focused on community. Within Google Plus you can easily find a community of like minded people on a whole range of subjects and interests. You can create your own topic creations, your own communities and share them with everyone. Not only is Google Plus surviving, you could make the argument that it is thriving.
On their blog today, Evernote has announced pricing changes for their two pay tiers as well as change to their free basic tier. The prices go into effect immediately for new customers who sign up starting today while those who already have an account will see the price increase starting August 15th. For the free basic tier, functionally the program remains pretty much the same although you are now limited to syncing to two devices. Those two device can be a PC or a phone, a phone and tablet, a PC and a tablet, etc. You get the idea: two devices only. The basic tier also has the free PIN locking of your account on your devices, which became a part of the free tier earlier this month.
A behind-the-scenes update and a new partnership with LyricFind has brought inline lyric viewing right within Google Search and Google Play Music on your Android phone. The partnership with LyricFind brings lyrics to songs from over 4,000 publishers to the apps, making it much easier and smoother to find the words to your favorite song (and to figure out if you have been singing them wrong all these years!).
“We’re happy to expand the depth and quality of lyrics available on Google’s services,” says LyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne. “We’re working together to make lyrics available to a larger audience in a faster and more efficient way.”
LyricFind has been the main driver behind creating a legal and global lyric infrastructure for all platforms, and its partnership with Google further strengthens this mission. LyricFind collects new royalties for songwriters and rightsholders, and benefits music fans who engage more easily than ever with lyrics that inspire them.
Ultimate the good news for us Google users is that there is nothing we have to do to make the magic happen other than do a search.