Those entrenched in World of Warcraft have had more than a few reasons to rejoice over the last few months. At BlizzCon, the newest expansion was announced and then released. Since then, millions of people have been joining the World left and right.
In addition to that, another game from the folks at Blizzard has been released and is extremely popular, Heroes of the Storm. This also has been taking the world by storm, especially because of the fact that it’s free to play.
While playing these games, it’s important to keep your Battle.net account secure, because you definitely don’t want the wrong people getting ahold of your credit card information. Currently there are a couple of ways to keep your Battle.net account secure.
You can purchase a mobile authenticator which is a dongle that you can throw on your key-ring or back pack. The other is through a mobile app available on iOS and Android that acts as a two-step authenticator process. However, the application was in DESPERATE need of an update, and thankfully, today it has come.
The Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app has hit version 2.0, and doesn’t really bring any new features, but instead, is mainly just an aesthetics upgrade. The previous version looked like an app from yester-year dating back to the Froyo days. However, this new design brings the app up to the standards of Lollipop design and such.
Let us know what you think about this update to the Battle.net authenticator application and whether it really matters to you or not.
Get ready for a few more advertisements in your Instagram feeds. According to an announcement on the official Instagram blog, businesses will soon be able to run campaigns on the social networking service.
Taking advantage of the technology behind Facebook’s ad infrastructure, the Instagram ads will let advertisers target messages and hit the right people, regardless of topic. There will be new ad formats rolling out however it is unclear just what that really means.
Instagram says they’ve been working with various ad partners this summer and have the results thus far seem quite positive. Whether it’s higher engagement, acquiring new customers, or pushing app installs, the new ads have worked well for Kabam, The North Face, Made.com, and Gilt Groupe.
Instagram is also announcing a number of other tools and capabilities:
Landscape photo and video to unlock new creative opportunities and give ads a more cinematic feel
Video ads of up to 30 seconds in length, so brands can engage in richer storytelling
Marquee, a new premium product that helps drive mass awareness and expanded reach in a short time-frame—perfect for events like movie premieres and new product launches
Delivery and optimization tools to manage and drive the best performance of campaigns across Facebook and Instagram
How do you feel about seeing occasional advertisements inside your timelines and social network feeds? Do you stop to watch or check them out or have you learned to tune them out?
After finally admitting defeat, Amazon’s Fire Phone is no more. Last month, Amazon revealed that the Fire Phone was a flop and started discounting the device to prices as low as $130. With a free year of Prime attached, you were essentially getting the device for only $30.
Regardless of the price cut, Amazon has seemingly run out of stock, and is officially discontinuing the Fire Phone from being sold. Amazon had big hopes to change up the mobile device market, but instead, they barely made a dent. Sub-par specs and an awkward user experience made the Fire Phone a head-scratching release.
The pricing of the Fire Phone started at $649 off contract, or $199 for two years through AT&T, but as sales took a dive, so did the price. In conversations amongst us here at AndroidGuys, we were still hesitant to pull the trigger, even at the price point of $130.
However, Amazon hasn’t given up completely on offering everyone new devices to try out. Reports have surfaced surrounding a new tablet that Amazon is gearing up to release for the Holiday season. In regards of this device, the reports are stating that it will be a 6-inch device, and will cost around $50 or less. However, it’s too early to know whether this will be another product in their Kindle Fire lineup, or something different altogether.
Sound off in the comments below about whether you picked up the Fire Phone before it went on the discontinued line.
With Android Marshmallow coming sometime within the next month or so, the Android Developers Blog has shared the current OS breakdown. These numbers space across any devices running Android 2.2 or higher, due to the fact that the latest Google Play Store app is compatible all the way back to Froyo.
Leading the pack is still Android 4.4 KitKat, with just over 39%, however Lollipop is slowly creeping up on that number. Currently, Lollipop is sitting at 21% combined between Android 5.0 and Android 5.1. These aren’t really that surprising considering the slow roll out that has surrounded Lollipop, and that there are still some relevant devices that have yet to receive the update from KitKat.
Wedged in between KitKat and Lollipop is Jelly Bean, accounting for 31.8% of the pie. That’s a little surprising considering that it’s been a couple of years since Jelly Bean was relevant. But maybe it’s those lower end devices that can’t be upgraded to KitKat/Lollipop.
Hopefully, once Android Marshmallow is released, the roll out won’t be as painstaking as the Lollipop roll out was. Only time will tell, however, if previous experiences are anything to look it, the horizon is looking grim. Unless you’re lucky enough to have a Nexus device, then everything should be peachy.
Drop us a line and let us know what’s the oldest Android OS that can be found on any of your devices.
In this post, I’ll show you how to customize Google Now cards. But first, what is Google Now? The service essentially is a personal assistant. With it, you can get notifications and updates on topics that matter to you, such as apps, websites, sports, stocks, Google Play albums, and even travel notifications and bills. Google Now can also display topics based on searches you’ve made. You have control over these because you can tailor them directly to your needs.
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Customizing
Before you can tweak Google Now, you’ll need to make sure the cards are turned on. Swipe from the left edge of the screen or tap the menu icon at the top left. Next, go to “Settings,” “Now cards,” and “Show cards,” and switch the toggle to on if it is off.
Google Now’s sidebar menu
Next, we can customize the cards. Return to the sidebar menu and click “Customize.” You should see options for apps & websites, sports, stocks, etc., possibly with some numbers next to them.
Clicking on any one will give you relevant options for each. For example, under apps & websites, you can select whether to allow cards from apps and websites in general or even at an individual level as long as Google Now thinks you would be interested in receiving updates from that particular site.
And under anything else, Google Now will list a number of choices it thinks are relevant to your interests. It will ask a question such as, “Continue to get updates about albums?” to which you can submit “Yes” or “No.”
Periodically, Google Now will show these options on the main page if you have not answered them.
Let’s do two tasks for this example: add a sports team and add a stock.
On the “Customize” menu, click “Sports.” Then, tap “+ Add a team.” This will pull up a prompt that allows you to type the name of the team you want to follow. As you do so, suggestions of teams and icons indicating their sport appear. Select one, and it will be added to the “Interested in” section.
The steps for adding a stock are nearly the same. The differences are that you need to click “Stocks” from the “Customize” menu, and then, you have to click “+ Add a stock.”
Moving on, at least most of the cards you see will have three, small circles (…) at their top right corners. Clicking these circles will bring up a yes or no question. If you’ve already answered it, it’ll tell how long ago it was answered. Of course, you can change your response at any time.
Set Reminders
Google Now is able to set up reminders for events manually either from “Reminders” in the sidebar menu or by tapping the microphone icon on the main screen and telling it your command. They will appear on the main screen as their deadlines approach.
Additionally, they can be viewed and edited from “Reminders” or the main screen.
Shipping Information
Google Now also is capable of tracking the shipment statuses of your packages through its integration with Gmail.
The service looks for online orders in your Gmail. When it finds them, it will show you a card including the package’s status (shipping versus delivered, for example), where the item originated from, and the estimated arrival date.
At the bottom, you can track the card directly and view the email that contains information about the order.
Flight Information
This works similarly to how Google Now tracks packages. You’ll receive the name of the flight, its status, the email address of the flight company, and details pertaining to which terminal to go to at which airport at a specific time.
Just as before, you can view the email directly via the “View email” button at the card’s bottom. There also is an option to navigate by GPS, with the estimated arrival time included.
Website Updates
In addition, the service can update you on sites you’ve recently visited when it detects that new content is available. However, this feature is one of the hardest aspects of Google Now to really pinpoint. It isn’t very consistent, and even websites you visit frequently aren’t likely to show up, though they are more likely to show up. See the problem?
As far as I know, you are mostly unable to control directly which sites you want to get updates from, as you can with an RSS feed. If anyone has any tips regarding this feature, shoot off in the comments below!
Conclusion
With these steps, you can make Google Now your very own ecosystem.
If you think about it, the service is not all that different than RSS. Each acts as a hub for potential sources that you want to add in order to follow them.
Google Now is more flexible in the sense that it can do more than give you just news content. However, it probably is not a complete replacement for RSS since it will not always use the same source for a particular topic. It will use the same source only if you specify to receive updates from a specific site. Also, Google Now is not all that time-sensitive with this, which is not desirable for people who like to get their news as it is released.
Alliteration aside (see what I did there?), I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Moto Pulse wireless headset. And let me tell you, I now want to buy a pair. Why is that, you ask? Well my friend, that’s what I’m here to do, to answer such questions!
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[df-subtitle]Setup[/df-subtitle]
Setup was surprisingly easy for a Bluetooth headset. Almost perpetually the first time setting up a Bluetooth device to my phone is an arduous process of turning Bluetooth on and off, searching for a device, making both visible, so on and so forth.
However, turning the Moto Pulse on and pairing to both my smartphone and laptop was an instantaneous action. I was listening to audio without any qualms.
And that, is a beautiful thing.
What’s great about these headphones is you can pair it to two devices at once, and it will almost seamlessly play from each device when you stop audio on one and start audio on the other. I did this with my phone and computer often, and I could pause a video on my computer only to play music on my phone with no problem.
[df-subtitle]Usage[/df-subtitle]
Again, using these headphones could not have been an easier thing to do. Any time I did struggle was because I was actually complicating things (I know, surprising).
On the right-ear cup are a myriad of buttons to control the audio from your device. Starting from the top going down, you have the power button, then volume up/next track, volume down/previous track, and lastly play/pause button, which also acts as the answer/end call button.
Usually when devices have buttons with dual purposes, it is a pain in the butt to perform the action you need. However, again I found that following the directions to perform an action would translate perfectly to the device. Skipping tracks, pausing sound, answering calls, everything was a seamless experience. What’s great is this seemingly works across all apps. At least the play/pause button worked with Google Play Music, Joyride, and YouTube. I can’t guarantee this per se, but it certainly seems hopeful.
Another great thing about these headphones is just how light they are. If it weren’t for the fact that I live in Phoenix, Arizona where the heat makes anything noticeable, I probably would have hardly noticed I had them at all. So, traveling with them was a breeze, whether it was around my neck or in my bag. A neat design choice Motorola added was that the headphone cups will turn so that the headset lays flat, making storage in a bag much better than just about any other set of headphones. I definitely preferred this method over headphones that fold in, but that might be personal preference. Add with all of this the fact that these are wireless headphones, and the Moto Pulse is the perfect set of headphones for travel.
Now one hesitation for wireless headphones is battery life. I’ll tell you straight-up, battery life is no problem for the Moto Pulse. Motorola claims 18 hours of usage for these, and yet, in some miraculous form of black magic, I’ve gotten about 24 hours of use. Generally a manufacturer’s claim for battery life rounds up, but for these they rounded down! Have you figured out yet why I love these so much?
[df-subtitle]Sound Quality[/df-subtitle]
Now, I should front this section by saying this: I don’t necessarily consider myself an audiophile, however, I do drive my wife nuts by complaining that sound from our TV, car, etc doesn’t sound very good when she thinks it’s fine (maybe that’s just typical spousal bickering…). Point being, I don’t want audiophiles to come back with their torches and pitchforks when something I said wasn’t right.
With that out of the way, I thought the Moto Pulse sounds great. I can hear each instrument clearly, with good highs and lows. If anything, there were times where I wanted to feel the bass a bit more, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t fix with an equalizer on my phone. When listening to podcasts (with voices only), I could hear each voice crisply, and never felt as though I was missing something because I couldn’t understand someone.
So, these $60 pair of headphones isn’t going to win any audio awards necessarily, but I think 99% of the world is going to love the sound that come out of the headphones. If you need something more, then stop looking at $60 headphones!
Ask anyone I’ve been bugging the last few weeks, I love these headphones. They sound good, feel good, are easy to setup and use, have a long battery life, and travel well. Further, they look good, and have no wires!
Now I know what you’re thinking: how much do I need to spend to enjoy these great headphones? $60. Yup. When it comes to wireless headphones that work well and sound good you’re generally looking to spend over $100. The Moto Pulse? Nope. $60.
The Google Play Store has just received a version bump, bringing it to version 5.9.11 and gets devices ready for the impending launch of Android 6.0, as well as bringing with it support for fingerprint readers (hello Nexus 5X), a uninstall manager, and more.
What’s New
There’s plenty of new additions to the Google Play Store 5.9.11 and the release is clearly geared towards preparing things for the launch of Android 6.0. You’ll notice a new dialogue appear for apps optimised for Android 6.0 that will notify that such as will start asking for permissions when you start using them.
You’ll also notice that the latest Google Play Store adds in a handful of new permissions to the package, most of which are used for reading SMS messages and the contact list, which is more than likely to do with the app invite system.
Of the changes introduced with this new version of the Google Play Store, the most notable is that of fingerprint reader support. With no native support for fingerprint sensors previously in Android, it was a mystery as to how the much rumored fingerprint reader on the new Nexus lineup would function. That mystery is now cleared up with fingerprint readers officially supported in Google Play, and as such more than likely purchases using the sensor.
There’s a new feature introduced with this version of the Play Store called ‘Uninstall Manager’ that will make it easier to identify those apps that are eating all your storage and get rid of them. It seems that this feature only highlights physical app size, rather than associated media or cache space consumption.
You can read the full APK teardown over at AndroidPolice.
Why download it?
If like me you like to be on the cutting edge of developments, you can go ahead and grab the latest Google Play Store 5.9.11 APK from here. Running the latest version of the Google Play Store always ensures you have the latest features and experience the changes first-hand into new developments within the APK. Often small incremental updates will lay the ground work for future, more substantial, changes and running the latest APK enables you to see these clues for yourself and experience the fixes Google are delivering to the Google Play Store app.
[alert color=”yellow”]Please appreciate the risk when sideloading APK’s onto your device. These are unvetted by Google, which means the source or the code have not been verified. You download and load this onto your device at your own risk.[/alert]
Notice anything else different in the newest version of the Google Play Store? Drop us a comment below.
Best Buy will normally price match Amazon prices but this is more than that. This is an official price cut to $350 instead of just a price match. We don’t know if this is a permanent deal so make sure you get yours soon if you’re interested. We still haven’t seen the Google Store drop their prices past the $499 mark. Google could be holding back on a price drop as to not tip their hand at the incoming new Nexus.
The Nexus 6 is still a very good performer and will stand up to most flagships of this year. While not as popular as it’s little brother, the Nexus 5, the device still has the advantage of a huge development community and fast updates from Google.
On Tuesday, Samsung Electronics announced they have begun mass production on the first of it’s kind 12 Gb LPDDR4 RAM. The new chips will be on their 20mm manufacturing process and offer 50% greater density than the 8Gb ram that Samsung currently produces.
The 12 Gb RAM allows for higher density PCB layout which increases capacity and reduces power demands. The new chip opens up the possibility that we’ll see more phones and tablets move from 2 and 3 GB of RAM to a new standard of 4 and 6 GB of more power efficient RAM. With this new advancement you can now use 6 GB of LPDDR4 RAM in the same amount of space that 3 GB of RAM currently uses.
The new chips will also bring increased speed. There is a 30% increase in speed over the current 8Gb chips that Samsung produces with a per-pin speed of 4266Mbps. Modern phones SoC’s normally have 4 memory dies and 12Gb RAM translate to about 1.5 GB so we’ll be able to see 6 GB of RAM in phones using the same amount of space as currently do.
Do you have a road trip coming up? Maybe an event where you’re in charge of the music and you don’t want to try too hard? Well, Pandora wants to help you get rid of those pesky ads for the day.
On September 9th, Pandora listeners will experience a “Listeners Love Day” which celebrates Pandora’s 10 year anniversary by getting rid of the ads for the day. (Presumably there will still be ads telling you it’s their 10th anniversary and you’re not going to hear ads that day). The next day, on September 10th, Pandora will offer you the same experience for 99 cents a day. Currently Pandora One is $5 a month and offers ad free listening but if that’s too much of a commitment for you, One Day Pass will allow you to go a day at a time for the pleasure of ad free listening.
[blockquote author=”Pandora”]“Some listeners want an ad-free experience every once in a while, and the Pandora One Day Pass offers a new way to effortlessly access the music they love.”[/blockquote]
Honestly this sounds like a low barrier of entry way to get people in the door for their more premium offers. Once you have a taste of the good stuff (ad free listening) you’ll want more and subscribe to something like Pandora One which brings in more money for the streaming service. Pandora has a lot of competitors in the music streaming space so any way to differentiate themselves may be a positive.
Do you think this is a valuable service? Is it something you’d ever consider? Let us know in the comments what you think about Pandora’s One Day Pass.
However, again I found that following the directions to perform an action would translate perfectly to the device. Skipping tracks, pausing sound, answering calls, everything was a seamless experience. What’s great is this seemingly works across all apps. At least the play/pause button worked with Google Play Music, Joyride, and YouTube. I can’t guarantee this per se, but it certainly seems hopeful.
