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Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous two weeks or so. The most notable release is, of course, Notes by Firefox, but Moment - Pro Camera and the Enpass6 Beta are also pretty useful. This week's roundup may be small, but it packs a punch. So without further ado, here are the most notable Android apps we have dug up in the last two weeks.

10 new and notable (and 1 WTF) Android apps from the last two weeks including Notes by Firefox, Moment - Pro Camera, and Enpass6 Beta (7/7/18 - 7/21/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The latest edition of the Civil Service Quarterly from Her Majesty's Government accidentally included a satirical poster from Scarfolk, the nightmarish alternate reality of a perpetually renewed decade of Thatcher/Cthulhu crossovers. (more…)

On Monday's Today Show, Cher spilled the news that she's recorded an entire album of ABBA covers. "After I did 'Fernando,' I thought it would be really fun to an album of ABBA songs, so I did!" she said in the interview. "It's not how you think of ABBA songs because I did it my way."

She recorded "Fernando" for the new film, Mamma Mia! 2 Here We Go Again, in which she has a role: https://youtu.be/gXmaZCm7fqs

A spokeswoman for UK Prime Minister Theresa May has gone to the House of Lords to defend the government's practice of recruiting "child spies," some of them under the age of 15, to gather intelligence "against terrorists, gangs and drug dealers." (more…)

It's an accomplishment to find and photograph a lynx: they want little to do with humans and make an effort to keep themselves to themselves. It's an even bigger accomplishment to not only find a lynx to photograph, but to also spend enough time with it that it comes to see you as a hunting buddy.

If you are in LA later this month through September, I recommend checking out "The New Romantics" group show at Corey Helford Gallery opening July 28. There's a great line up of artists.

Over a year in the making, Corey Helford Gallery is premiering "The New Romantics" group show on July 28, its largest exhibition of 2018 so far. Curated by Caro Buermann, the show will celebrate the new romantic visions of over 30 artists from around the world, including Camilla d'Errico, Adrian Cox, Relm, Pruch SintunavaI and Marie Larkin.

“There are many shows that celebrate beautiful imagery, but there aren’t many shows that tackle the implications of neo-romance and our growing attraction to the paradisiacal, the beautiful, and the magic that these images inspire," says Caro. "In today’s world, we are instantaneously exposed to a flood of bad news and images of terror which makes people long for safe places and redemptive perspectives.”

The Neo-Romanticism movement, which inspired The New Romantics, is not a new concept. Just as Early Romantic masters’ work was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism, as well as glorification of all the past and nature, this new generation of romantics reflect on the current state of their world. “They are artists who are sensitive to the current state of things and reinterpret the world through their figures, characters, or landscapes,” says Caro. “Not necessarily as it objectively exists, but rather as they are seeing and feeling it.”

Above: Marie Larkin

Above: Kate Zambrano

Above: Relm

Above: Iva Troj

Above: Joanne Nam

OPENING RECEPTION
July 28, 2018 | 7pm - 11pm

ON VIEW
July 28 - September 1, 2018

COREY HELFORD GALLERY
571 S. Anderson St. Los Angeles, CA 90033
Open Tuesday-Saturday, 12pm - 6pm
(310) 287-2340

A scuba diver in shallow water was surprised to see what looked like a "ghostly apparition" coming toward her. It turned out to be a rare albino stingray. (more…)

• Update 1: 2018/07/18 12:31pm PDT
  Life is Strange is here!

Square Enix's Life is Strange started its existence as an episodic graphic adventure game for PC and consoles back in 2015. At the time many critics found that it offered one of the best interactive stories of its generation, which is probably why it was eventually released on iOS two years later. Of course, like many high-profile iOS games, Android was never considered for a port.

[Update: Out now] Square Enix's graphic adventure 'Life is Strange' is finally coming to Android in July was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

• Update 1: 2018/07/18 1:46pm PDT
  Now arriving this week

Google has slowly but surely been updating its web features to use material design principles. Some of these updates have been more successful than others. The company is now undertaking a simple but potentially treacherous update: the sign-in page. G Suite users will start seeing the new page soon, and it'll probably reach everyone eventually.

The new sign-in screen has an updated logo, and all the text is center-aligned.

[Update: Slight delay, ready now] You're not being phished—Google is rolling out a new sign-in page was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

The switch from Google Play Music to YouTube Music hasn't been a very smooth one. Google is still ironing out the kinks, and one of the features that fell by the wayside was support for the new service on Google Home. See, even though YouTube Music has started rolling in many countries, it can't be set as a music provider on Assistant or Home speakers in most of them. Only the US, Australia, and Mexico supported it until a couple of days ago, but the UK is joining them now.

UK users can now play tunes from YouTube Music on Google Home and Assistant was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Skype was once the go-to for video messaging, but those days seem to have ended. Even so, updates to the service are ongoing, and the latest bump for v8.0 of the desktop version of the service is unifying the interface with the mobile design while also adding a few new features. Anyone still using v7/Skype classic will also need to upgrade by September.

You're going to have a lot of pissed off users, @Skype.

Skype makes v8.0 a required update, reveals roadmap including call recording, encrypted conversations, and group links was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Did you know a baby peacock is called a peachick? I didn't until I started writing this post up. I'm not even sure I had ever even seen a baby peacock, er peachick, before in my life. This peachick's name is Drew and he was rescued by the folks at Hairy Farmpit Girls in White Oak, Georgia. Last week, they captured him strutting around with his new big-bird feathers for the first time and it's really, really cute.

News4Jax reports:

"Drew was thrown in a garbage can out in Douglas, Georgia," Jennifer Evitts, owner of Hairy Farmpit Girls... "Someone saw what happened, grabbed him and then reached out to us to see if we would take him as she didn't know what to do with him."

...In addition to providing a safe haven for abused or neglected animals, the farm sells a range of goat milk-based products, from soap to lotion to lip balm, to support their cause.

(reddit)

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. This week I have so many games that it's difficult to pick my favorites. FRACTER is a definite standout if you enjoy light-based puzzle games. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the new beta listing for PUBG Mobile, so make sure to check that out if you are a battle royale fan.

30 best new Android games released this week including Beta PUBG Mobile, FRACTER, and Star Ocean: Anamnesis was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

I have a long list of small complaints about Spotify and, until today, one of them was the lack of an option to re-order tracks in the playlists that I've created. I could re-arrange my playing queue after choosing a playlist, or go to the desktop or web player to edit that playlist, but on my Android phone, the "custom" sorting order wasn't modifiable. Now, it appears the function is rolling out.

Re-ordering tracks in your Spotify playlists is now possible on Android was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Look at this table. LOOK. AT. IT. Why haven't we put the person that designed this thing to work on world peace or figuring out how to make an air freshener that smells like a turkey dinner? Maybe expanding tables like this are old hat to you, but my mind is absolutely blown.

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. This week I'm changing things up a little. I have removed the Play Store descriptions that used to appear underneath my body of text explaining each game. This should provide a cleaner look with less clutter, not to mention less formatting on my end.

19 best new Android games released this week including Old School RuneScape, Dead Island: Survivors, and DERE EVIL EXE was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

When Android Pay was renamed to Google Pay earlier this year, the Google Wallet site (which allows you to send and receive money, as well as manage payment methods) also became Google Pay. However, the desktop site didn't get the same redesign that the mobile apps did - until now.

The web app now has the same Google Material Theme that the company's other apps are now using, like Maps.

Google Pay web app redesign now rolling out was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. This week I have a few distinguished standouts such as a Spotify Lite app that is in testing, a security and tracking app for T-Mobile users, and a sharing app designed to replace your stock share dialog with something that has more functionality.

10 new and notable Android apps from the last week including Spotify Lite, T-Mobile FamilyMode, and Sharedr (6/30/18 - 7/7/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Three poachers who broke into a game reserve this week were eaten by lions, reports Newsweek.

(more…)

In the first part of this video, the guys at the sports/comedy YouTube Channel Dude Perfect launch a ping pong ball through a Rube Goldberg-like contraption that fills a room. Once it's made its way through, then they show off their mad trick shots using ping pong balls. The video's vibe is bro-ish but the tricks are impressive!

This is their fourth in a series of (gone-incredibly-viral) "ping pong trick shot" videos. Here are the other three: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeG1ftTmLAg 145M views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtsfUAHkyWQ 150M views https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nRZhGP5apQ 50M views

It wasn't until she became an adult and a librarian, Nancy Pearl writes, that she "began to question my commitment to finishing each and every book that I began." Now she has a simple method for dropping a bad one, one obvious and plain and yet fair enough: the Rule of 50.

Give a book 50 pages. When you get to the bottom of Page 50, ask yourself if you're really liking the book. If you are, of course, then great, keep on reading. But if you're not, then put it down and look for another. (Always keep in mind that there's nothing to stop you from going back to it later, whether that might be in six days or six years. Or 60 years. There is many a book that I couldn't get into the first time, or even two, that I tried to read it, and then, giving it one more chance, totally fell under its spell. The book obviously hadn't changed - but I had.)

All my books will henceforth be 50 pages long, thereby obligating Nancy Pearl to read them in their entirety.

Photo: Nancy Pearl by Seattle Civic Council (CC0 1.0)

Via r/whoadude, my new favorite subreddit, appears this spectacular "glitch" video of a stroll through a Paris side-street, produced by Benjamin Bardou. It seems to combine glitchy compression artifacts and lidar -- the machine vision system used by self-driving automobiles, experimental drones and Betty White to create realtime 3D representations of their targets -- to spectacular effect.

Echinopsis cactus flowers explode in a riot of colors in this beautiful timelapse work by YouTuber EchinopsisFreak. In the example above, blooms somehow synchronize their brief appearance to maximize the chance of pollination. (more…)

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. This week I have a few exceptional apps I would like to highlights such as Instagram Lite, BBC Sounds, and Navbar Weather. Heck,there is even an app for all you Pokémon GO fans out there with the release of Silph Road.

13 new and notable Android apps from the last week including Instagram Lite, BBC Sounds, and Navbar Weather (6/24/18 - 6/30/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Speaking from experience, a few extra pounds makes everything worse.

Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times:

“From four years of teaching at Harvard, so many of my students are interested in journalism, but they mostly want to write first-person, highly personal narratives about themselves. That may reflect their age. But I think there’s too much of that in journalism. It’s not about us. It’s about the world, and covering the world.”

This has been my biggest gripe with the media establishment. Everything is about them, not about the news.