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Paul is a VERY good pig. Watch as, at his owner's behest, he cleans the heck out of his belongings, putting them back in his toy box, where they belong. I'd give so much if I could teach my dog to do this.

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.

Games

PUBG Mobile

Android Police coverage: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Mobile is officially available as a global release

PUBG Mobile may still be a beta release, but what it has to offer so far is a very playable battle royale game for mobile.

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30 new and notable Android games from the last week (3/21/18 - 3/27/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

What Went Wrong? is a citizen journalism project started in sub-Saharan Africa to document all the unsustainable aid projects started by Westerners who fail to follow through after their PR blitz. Journalist Peter DeCampo spoke with BRIGHT magazine about the project, where Africans can text reports on local fiascoes and boondoggles: (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.

Apps

Just a Line - Draw Anywhere, with AR

Android Police coverage: Doodle in the air with Google's new AR experiment, Just a Line [APK Download]

Google will often experiment with new ideas, which is what their latest app release Just a Line is all about, experimentation.

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17 new and notable Android apps from the last week (3/20/18 - 3/26/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

It's been six years since investigative journalists published their expose accusing London's Metropolitan Police of colluding with the UK's construction cartel to blacklist workers who complained about unsafe working conditions, abusive bosses and wage-theft, as well as union organisers and other "troublemakers" -- this week, the Met confirmed that its officers were an active part of the illegal blacklist. (more…)

I feel kinda bad about enjoying this video of kids smashing trikes into things, and other minor mishaps. This did not stop me from watching it, however.

This may look like grasslands, but it's a horse carefully positioned and beautifully photographed by Lee Diegaard, part of her Equuleus series. Below: Copper Valley. (more…)

Bordalo II creates massive sculptures from junkyard artifacts. Here, he creates an underwater scene. (more…)

Alphabet and Amazon are fierce competitors with several areas of increasing overlap. This includes the enterprise cloud market, smart assistants, and now home delivery. Today, the retailer overtook Alphabet in terms of being the more valuable company, with Google’s parent dropping to the third place ranking.

more…

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.

Games

Florence

Android Police coverage: Florence is an emotional game about relationships by Monument Valley's lead designer, and now it's out for Android

Florence is a narrative-driven game that follows along with the protagonist as she discovers the ins and outs of her newest relationship.

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30 new and notable Android games from the last week (3/14/18 - 3/20/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

In the wake of the latest Facebook data breach catastrophe, Josh Constantine rounds up more than a decade's worth of major catastrophes wrought by Facebook's recklessness, greed, and foolishness, from Beacon to the "Engagement Ranked Feed" to the "Engagement Priced Ad Auctions" to the choices that created spamming games like Zynga's offerings, to the mass overwriting of privacy preferences, to "ethnic affinity" ad targeting, to the Real Names policy and the stalkers it abetted to Facebook's global anti-Net-Neutrality campaigns; to self-serve ads; to developer data access and the gift it handed to crooks like Cambridge Analytica. (more…)

Great Pyrenees like to think for themselves, and don't much care what you want them to do.

I took my buddy Nemo to agility training. He can do all the tricks. He will not do any of them once he has had enough treats. Simple things like sit, down or stay all come instantly, when he wants the treats I'm holding. Any other time, unless I have real urgency in my voice, Nemo feels I'm presenting options. Sit generally results in lay down. Stay is often "wander off and lay down over there."

This Pyr has a blast just knocking the crap out of that obstacle course.

"You scare me," he says. Then: "*sigh*"

Ross Symons wanted to improve both his photography and origami skills, so he challenged himself to create a fun photo of one of his miniature origami each day, something he started for fun in 2014. (more…)

Smartwatches haven't been the smash hit everyone was expecting. We're coming up on four years since Android Wear launched, and the platform has gained little traction. Well, Android Wear is over. Now it's Wear OS that has yet to gain traction. Yes, the rumored rebranding of Google's wearable OS is now official.

There's a new landing page for Wear OS, but you could be fooled if you missed the branding at the top of the page.

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The Android Wear rebrand to 'Wear OS' is now official was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

• Update 1: 2018/03/15 3:49am PDT
  According to Justin Uberti, Google Duo and WebRTC lead at Google, video messages are now fully rolled out to every Duo user on Android or iPhone with version 29

Duo's getting a handy new feature today that allows users to leave messages when their calls go unanswered. If the person on the receiving end misses or declines a call, the caller will now be able to record a clip to be reviewed later.

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[Update: Fully rolled out] Voicemail-like video messages come to Duo (APK Download) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

It's a silent video, but for a few chuckles from the camera operator. I recommend Maurice Ravel's Bolero as a soundtrack: https://youtu.be/dZDiaRZy0Ak?t=5m51s

“It just seemed that cosmology was more exciting, because it really did seem to involve the big question: Where did the universe come from?” — Stephen Hawking, 8 January 1942 - 14 March 2018

British physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. He was known for his groundbreaking work with black holes and relativity. (more…)

This luxurious upholstered cat sofa by FelinEva is certainly a favorite of the French maid in the video. Watch her fondle it gently, quietly, as if she herself was a cat, a cat in fishnet stockings.

Will actual cats be as enamored? There's no real way to know until it's in your living room, right? I'd guess my cat would quickly inspect it and then promptly ignore it, because cat.

No mention of the sofa's cost on the website but we have to imagine it's going to set you back a pretty penny.

"Would you rather be a cat sofa?"

Now, if you're in the market for a cat sofa but are looking for something a bit more economical (and less over-the-top), check out the Paws & Purrs sofa bed for cats (and other small to medium pets). It's about $102.

(hauspanther)

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.

Games

The Sims™ Mobile

Android Police coverage: After almost a year in testing, EA has officially released 'The Sims Mobile' on Android

The Sims Mobile takes the gameplay from EA's mobile life simulation game The Sims FreePlay and adds on top some of the mechanics from The Sims 4.

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24 new and notable Android games from the last week (3/7/18 - 3/13/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Back in January, we spotted YouTube preparing a dark theme for its mobile apps that would match the recently revamped desktop client. Today, the video site is making the dark theme official on iOS, with an update coming soon to Android.

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Fitbit announced two brand-new products today, plus a much-requested additional feature for the Fitbit app. The Fitbit Versa is the company's new flagship smartwatch, something of a replacement for the Ionic. The Ace wristband for kids is essentially a Fitbit Alta for children aged 8+. For the first time, with an update due in May 2018, the Fitbit app will offer female health features such as period tracking.

Fitbit Versa

Fitbit's Versa watch had already been leaked ahead of today's announcement, and it looks just as we expected.

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Fitbit announces Versa smartwatch and Ace kids wristband, adds female health tracking to the Fitbit app was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Finnish photographer Ossi Saarinen has gotten quite adept at taking photos of birds facing directly to camera, making each bird look adorably round, like the cute shot above. (more…)

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so.

Apps

Experience app for Galaxy S9/S9+

Android Police coverage: Samsung releases Experience demo app for Galaxy S9/S9+ [APK Download]

If you are in the market for a Galaxy S9 or S9+, then you may want to check out the Experience app for Galaxy S9/S9+.

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13 new and notable Android apps and live wallpapers from the last week (3/6/18 - 3/12/18) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

This is fascinating: Millions of clocks across Europe have lost time, because of a dispute over electricity generation.

Citizens across Europe had been noticing that clocks in certain devices -- LED-style alarm clocks, stoves, and microwaves -- had been gradually losing time over the last few weeks. Why? Because those devices keep time based on the frequency of the European electrical grid, which is normally 50 hertz.

But in the past few weeks, the frequency of the grid has dropped slightly -- it's down to 49.996 hertz. So all those clocks have gradually run more and more slowly. People had noticed ... https://twitter.com/allan_howe/status/971418087366037504

Okay, so ... why has the grid's frequency dropped? As NPR explains, it's because of a political fight:

The problem, affecting some two dozen countries from Spain to Turkey, originates from a political disagreement between Kosovo and Serbia, ENTSO-E said.

Reuters reports Kosovo was using more power than it generated and Serbia, responsible for righting an imbalance, failed to do so, resulting in the deviation.

Tensions have been rising between the two for some time. Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 2008 after the brutal war of the 1990s, but Belgrade still does not recognize Kosovo's independence. And Reuters reports that while Serbia and Kosovo agreed to jointly operate a power grid in 2015, disagreements over distribution have stalled implementation of the deal.

ENTSO-E spokeswoman Susanne Nies told NPR on Wednesday that Kosovo began producing enough power for its population on Tuesday, thus stopping the deviation. However, she said, "It will take some time for the Continental European power system to get back into the normal frequency" and the approximately six-minute lag remained in effect.

À la recherche du temps perdu.

Me, I had no idea there were clocks that synchronized themselves based on the power grid. That sounds ... nuts! Particularly since quartz technology is super accurate and dirt-cheap. But I suspect it's because it's impractical to run a battery-powered quartz timekeeper inside an appliance like a stove or a microwave, where it'd be a pain in the butt to change the battery every two years or so?

(Thanks to Debbie Chachra for this one!)

(CC-licensed photo courtesy Denise Krebs)

Nayan and Vaishali originally planned to make one piece of miniature art daily for 30 days, but following a great response for the first month, they decided to go for a full year. Lucky us! Above: a Baya Weaver Bird. (more…)

Last week Wareable revealed photos and details of an upcoming Fitbit smartwatch. The wearable company, on its latest earnings call, had claimed that this future watch would have "mass appeal." According to famed leakster Evan Blass, this watch will reportedly be dubbed 'Versa,' just like Nissan's cheap little subcompact car.

Fitbit Versa [details: https://t.co/H6Mr3ExmiI] cc: @wareable @HughLangley pic.twitter.com/RfCOvgNJ4Y

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) March 9, 2018

The Versa, which was thought to be a successor to the Fitbit Blaze, is said to run the same Fitbit OS software that we first saw on the Ionic.

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New 'mass-appeal' Fitbit watch to be called Versa was written by the awesome team at Android Police.