Android Instant Apps was announced at Google I/O last year, and it got quite a bit of attention and quite a few fans. It promised the ability to run compatible apps without downloading them.
Want to read a BuzzFeed article? You can click it in search results and open the app instead of the webpage without an install. Want to easily buy something? Open the app rather than the site and check out easier with Android Pay. It should be a really useful feature if developers can integrate it right.
A limited test of this new feature is finally starting with apps like BuzzFeed, Wish, Periscope, and Viki. The limited test will allow Android users to give this new feature a try and leave feedback. Hopefully it’ll be expanded soon to more apps and users.
Let us know in the comments if you manage to play with it!
It’s Friday night and you hit the road early enough to make it to a movie, grab some buttery popcorn, and catch the previews. But when you get to the theater, parking is hard to come by and you spend the next 20 minutes circling the lot and side streets until a spot finally opens up. You get to your seat just in time for the opening credits…and no popcorn!
Factoring in time for parking can make or break a night out, let alone making it to that big meeting on time. So in 25 metro areas throughout the U.S., we’ve introduced a new parking difficulty icon in Google Maps for Android that’ll give you a heads up on what kind of parking crunch to prepare for when you’re on the go.
To see how hard it might be to park where you’re headed, just get directions to your destination and look for the parking difficulty icon in the directions card at the bottom of the screen. Parking difficulties range from limited to medium to easy and are based on historical parking data (similar to how we calculate Popular Times and Visit Duration).
For now, look out for parking difficulty icons in the following metro areas across the U.S.: San Francisco, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, St. Louis, Tampa, Washington, DC, Cleveland, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Houston, Phoenix, Portland and Sacramento.
I've got it now. I does look really nice, but it's missing A LOT of settings. Just a few: Can't change call screening. Can't change Do Not Disturb Can't change Spam setting Can't modify outgoing voicemail message
It’s been several years since we’ve made significant updates to the Google Voice apps but today we’re bringing a fresh set of features to Google Voice with updates to our apps on Android, iOS and the web.
Going forward, we’ll provide new updates and features to the Google Voice apps.
I haven’t seen this yet, but the screenshots look good. I was definitely one of those people worried that GV was going to die, so I’m glad to see that’s not the case.
Tilt Brush is a tool for creators of all backgrounds and styles to make art in virtual reality. Sketches made in Tilt Brush stand on their own — you can film your sketches, take 2D snapshots, export them as 3D objects. However there hasn't been an easy way to add animation, interactivity, or sequencing to your art. That is, until now.
Today, we're introducing the Tilt Brush Toolkit, an open source library for bringing your Tilt Brush art to other creative projects. With the toolkit, the next generation of artists can create narrative, interactive, and immersive content using Tilt Brush sketches.
The Tilt Brush Toolkit includes Python scripts and a Unity SDK with everything you need to make movies, interactive stories, video games, music videos, or other projects using assets created in Tilt Brush. We’re sharing all of our brush shaders, our audio reactive code, a streamlined Unity import pipeline, file format conversion utilities, and several great examples so hobbyists and professionals can showcase their Tilt Brush art in new places, on new platforms, and in new ways.
Share your projects using the #TiltBrush hashtag, and we’ll highlight our favorites from @googlevr.
Superhero's First Onscreen Appearance vs Latest Appearance
Check out this neat comparison of superhero's and villain's first onscreen appearance vs their latest appearance! There's quite the difference in a lot of these, but I love how Wolverine has always been Hugh Jackman...
Google has confirmed that it’s planning to launch a pair of flagship smartwatches with Android Wear 2.0 on board in the early part of 2017. Now, thanks to a report from VentureBeat, several key details regarding the upcoming devices has been revealed.
There will indeed be two smartwatches, and while Google is considering both flagship watches, there’s clearly one that will stand out with higher-end features. (The image at the top of this post contains renders from a previous leak that show what the smartwatches may look like.)
The two wearables are reportedly be called the LG Watch Sport and LG Watch Style. They will be officially announced on February 9, along with another unveiling of Android Wear 2.0, and they will go on sale the following day. LG will be promoting the wearables at its booth at Mobile World Congress when that event kicks off at the end of February.
As far as specifications go, the Watch Sport is believed to be the high-end flagship of the pair. It will reportedly feature a 1.38-inch round plastic OLED display with a resolution of 480×480 with 768MB of RAM and 4GB of built-in storage. It will also offer 3G and 4G connectivity, NFC, and GPS. The NFC support means the Watch Sport will offer Android Pay compatibility. It will also offer IP68 water and dust resistance, and the battery will be measured in at 430mAh. It will offer a heart rate monitor, too.
Meanwhile, the Watch Style will measure in at 10.8 millimeters thick, with a round 1.2-inch plastic OLED display with a resolution of 360×360. It will apparently not have NFC support, nor will it offer any cellular connectivity. It will have 512MB of RAM and 4GB of built-in storage, though, and the battery is said to be measured in at 240mAh. It will be IP67-rated for water and dust resistance.
The report also states that both smartwatches will feature a Digital Crown, much in the same way that the Apple Watch does, which will be used for navigation. The plastic OLED touch screens will support handwriting recognition as well.
If February 9 is the big reveal date, we don’t have long to wait. What do you think of the rumored specs for Google’s upcoming smartwatches?
Whether you’re a commuter reading the news with a spotty network, a farmer looking up crop prices with no service in the fields, or just driving through a tunnel, all is not lost when your search is interrupted by a bad connection. Now on the Google app for Android, even if your search fails, Google will deliver your results as soon as a connection is available—so you can keep searching with a single tap.
Mobile networks can sometimes be inconsistent or spotty, which means that even if you have a connection when you start your search, it might fail before you get your results back. With this change, search results are saved as soon as they are retrieved, even if you lose connection afterwards or go into airplane mode. So the next time you lose service, feel free to queue up your searches, put your phone away and carry on with your day. The Google app will work behind-the-scenes to detect when a connection is available again and deliver your search results once completed.
And if you’re worried about data charges or preserving battery life, don’t fret. This feature won’t drain your battery, and by fetching streamlined search results pages, it minimally impacts data usage.
So before you head out the door, make sure the Google app is running the latest version for Android, and the next time you hit a spotty network, your results are covered.
Not going to argue. I find this theory highly plausible.
Game breaking glitches are bad, but glitches that are fun to exploit and don't ruin the gaming experience are good. Usually...
What has been seen cannot be unseen...
