Tag: Android

Today over at Amazon, you can take advantage of a sale the retailer is having on various Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions.  The discounts vary by package but if you chose the Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal, it gives you free access to the full features of the Office apps for Android on your phone or tablet.  Even if you are already an Office 365 subscriber, you can take advantage of the sale.

Office 365 Home allows you to install the full Office suite on up to 5 PCs or Macs plus 5 tablets and 5 phones.  That package is on sale today for $89.99, a savings of 10%.  It is delivered to you by download (you will get the key to add the suite to your Microsoft Office account) and this isn’t just the web versions but the full PC or Mac versions too.

One of the biggest challenges facing Android as a platform but mobile devices in general is security.  For their part, Google has been working hard to get security updates out to devices on a monthly basis.  The problem, however, is not Nexus devices.  It is the countless other manufactures and carriers out there who are painfully slow or simply refuse to update devices with the latest security updates in a timely manner.  It leaves consumers vulnerable unnecessarily.  It would seem that Google has had enough and may be about to use a tactic to get manufactures and carriers to update devices.

Public shaming.

Android Pay has received another round of banks and financial institutions that support the tap-and-pay service, including Capital One (finally).  In all, there are 48 new banks and financial institutions added to the service, ranging from big nationals to small local banks and Credit Unions.  It is just the latest in what has turned into a series of updates to the service and the institutions that support it for their customers.  These new additions mean that customers can add their debit card from a supported bank and use it to pay for things at a touch terminal.

TripAdvisor and Google Play Music have teamed up with a unique promotion that gives you unique stations in the music service for the locations you are searching in the travel app.  Here is now it works:  Type in a city or country you want to visit in TripAdvisor and when you find it, tap it.  Now scroll about halfway down and you will see a new Google Play Music section with unique stations for that location.  From there you can save these stations in your Music library for playing later.  The combination of the apps gives you great travel information and music germane to that location.

If you are on the T-Mobile network and have a Samsung Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge, you will want to check for a small but important security update that has been released by the carrier.  The update brings a security fix to the device although the details of exactly what was fixed is not explicitly laid out in the release notes.  It isn’t the May Android Security update as that came earlier in the month so this is a separate fix from that release.  On the Galaxy S7, you are looking for build G930TUVS3APD8 while on the S7 Edge, you will want to look for build G935TUVU3APD8.

While rumors have been floating for a couple of weeks, this morning Twitter made it official that big changes are coming to the 140 character limit of the micro-blogging site.  The updates, which will take effect over the course of the next several months, will make replies and attached images not count against your character limit.  That means you can attach a photo to your Tweet and it not consume upwards of 23 characters to link.  It is a huge change and while the 140 character limit which has made the service popular is still in place, it will become a lot more user friendly and flexible as these updates roll out.