It is now official. Unicode 9.0 has been ratified and is now available for companies like Google to start baking into their platforms. We already know that Android N will support the standard out-of-the-box but it is possible that Marshmallow could see it in a future update as well. In all there are 7,500 characters added to the standard along with 72 new emoji.
One of the more powerful features of Android is the Do Not Disturb function. It is a feature that has grown in functionality over the life of Android Lollipop and Marshmallow (spoiler alert: It gets further tweaks in N) for keeping your phone quite while you sleep, at the theater or in a meeting. Did you know though that you can set up a DND for events from your calendar? It is a feature that is handy by not requiring you to manually turn on Do Not Disturb before a meeting begins. In this How To I’ll show you how to set it up.
Google has made a small but nice improvement to their authorization process of account access for those with 2-factor authentication enabled. Previously, in order to approve a device accessing your account, you had to either get a text message to your phone or use the Google Authenticator app. Now you can get a simple, full screen notification on your Android phone to approve access to your account. It’s simple and effective and far faster than waiting on that text or opening the Authenticator app.
Google Calendar for Android has been updated and with it comes a new event conflict notification feature. This feature shows you in the app as you try to schedule another event where you have conflicts in your schedule. The idea is to prevent yourself from double-booking events only to realize it later. This feature actually rolled out to those who use the app as part of Google apps for Work or Education last month as they were tied to domains associated with those services. Google has now rolled it out to everyone although it does have some limitations.
The Google Photos app and service got a small tweak yesterday behind-the-scenes that will make heavy users of the app rejoice. Now when you are viewing your albums in either the app or on the web, there is a new Slideshow feature on the overflow menu. That feature allows you to start a slide show on your devices or, if you have a Chromecast, cast them to your TV. It is a small addition but an important one as it is an often requested feature.
Full disclosure: I’m a Google Top Contributor for Google Photos in the Product Forums.
The nice thing about this update is there is not app update required. The most current version of the app on your phone or tablet will simply have the feature pushed to it.
The TED Talks app, simply known as TED in the Google Play Store, has been updated with a completely re-imagined user experience. The updated build, version 3.0 for those keeping score at home, has been beautifully updated in Material Design, bringing a polished look & feel to the app. If you are not familiar with TED Talks, they describe their mission and purpose best.
TED is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less). TED began in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment and Design converged, and today covers almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages.
There is a wealth of information you can find by watching hundreds if not thousands of videos on a wide range of subjects and interests.
There is a new update to the Starbucks app rolling out for Android that brings a much easier way of tracking your progress towards a free coffee. The update, versions 4.2.1 for those keeping score at home, now has a Rewards bar at the top of the main page that tells you how many stars you need to collect to get that free cup of Joe. In the previous version, you had to tap on your star count at the top to see how many you needed for your reward. This update eliminates the need to do that tap, putting your needed number of stars front-and-center for you.
The Google Apps team have announced some new editing features for both Google Docs and Google Sheets. These new features are coming to the apps on both Android and iOS and should be rolling out to devices over the course of the next few days via an OTA update. Both features are aimed at bringing more desktop-like editing features to the mobile device so you don’t necessarily have to be at a Chromebook, PC or Mac.
For Google Docs, you can now edit documents while you are in Print Layout view within the app. To edit the doc, just tap on the edit pencil icon and you can make your edits without having to leave Print Layout view.