Google

Google Is Giving Away Up-to-Date Satellite Images For Free

Google has announced that its recently acquired company Skybox, known for its high-quality satellite imaging, is to begin giving away satellite images to help people do goo things. But don’t worry: you’ll be able to see them too. The new scheme—called Skybox For Good—will see the company provide up-to-date satellite photos to people and organizations…

9 of the Biggest Mess Ups in Tech History

Technology is tough to create and even tougher to predict. What can seem like a breakthrough product one minute, can quickly turn into a nightmarish mistake. Last week, I asked what were the biggest tech gaffes in history. This question was prompted, in part, by the dismal sales of Amazon’s Fire Phone, which the company’s…

A Google Executive Just Crushed Felix Baumgartner’s Free Fall Record

Move aside, Felix Baumgartner. Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at Google, fell from the top of the stratosphere this morning, plummeting nearly 26 vertical miles in the span of about 15 minutes. In doing so, he has broken Baumgartner’s 2012 record for world’s highest-altitude free fall – and by a pretty sizable margin. Photo…

Google’s Launching a Special Store Just for Project Ara Hardware

Everybody’s favorite modular phone project, Google’s Ara, is about to get little bit more interesting. Recently, the company quietly announced that it would be launching a hardware store for developers to sell their own Ara components. It’ll be a little bit like the Play Store, except with hot-swappable hardware instead of apps. This app store…

Nexus 9 Hands-On: Android’s iPad Air Is a Looker, Not a Stunner

The last time HTC made a tablet, it was basically just an overweight smartphone with subpar specs. The new Nexus 9, however, is actually worthy of your consideration. https://gizmodo.com/googles-new-nexus-9-is-androids-ipad-air-1646616639 The 8.9-inch device is Google’s new flagship tablet, completely replacing the beloved Nexus 7 from last year. And it signals a shift in what Google believes…

Google’s Search Changes Are Reportedly Destroying Top Pirate Sites

Last week Google announced that it would be rolling out changes to its search algorithm to significantly demote sites that receive a large number of valid copyright takedown requests. Now TorrentFreak reports that top sites have taken tremendous hits in traffic coming from Google. TorrentFreak spoke to several torrent site operators who say that beginning…

Android Wear’s First Big Update Is Rolling Out

The first significant update for Android Wear is now rolling out, and it all lines up nicely with a rumor we heard early last month. Most significantly, the update brings offline storage for your music, enhanced Bluetooth pairing, and support for Wear watches with GPS. Basically, Android Wear really wants to be your running buddy.…

Inbox First Impressions: Potentially Awesome But Not Quite There

When the news broke yesterday of Google’s new Inbox app, my initial reaction was skeptical. How many times has an app tried to “solve” email? Inbox is Google’s way of helping you organize the typhoon of greetings, promos, invoices, and discussions that beg for your attention. And after using it for a while, I can…

Google Now cards appear to have started warning us about impending solar eclipses. Which is, uh, useful?

Google Can’t Fix What’s Really Wrong With Email: Us

Today Google announced an ambitious project called Inbox, a new way to manage your Gmail that looks like an absolute godsend. There is, however, one thing that Google’s clever engineering won’t fix, and might actually make worse: The humans sending the emails. “We get more email now than ever,” say the Inbox team in their…

Google’s Inbox App Wants To Read Your Email So You Don’t Have To

Today, Google revealed a project two years in the making. At first glance it looks just like a redesign of Gmail, and that’s sort of half true. It’s actually a completely new system called “Inbox” and it wants to reimagine your email. Google describes its major differences from traditional email in a couple ways. First,…

Google Play Music Gets a New Look and Songza’s Suggestion Superpowers

Today, Google Play Music gets smarter about the suggestions it offers, by taking into account the time of day, day of the week, and device you’re using. So when you’re dragging at the end of the work day, you get just the jams you need to get through it. You might recognize that the new…

You Can Now Protect Your Google Accounts With a Physical Key

Two-step authentication is super important. It’s also super annoying. To try and ease the pain—and make logins even more secure—Google will now let you use a USB security key to verify yourself instead of having a code sent to your phone. https://gizmodo.com/its-time-to-enable-two-step-authentication-on-everythin-1646242605 The new feature works with a special kind of USB key. You can’t…

Google Just Released Hundreds of Cool Icons That You Can Use For Free

As part of its Material Design project, Google has published a set of lovely icons, designed for use in mobile apps or whatever else you fancy using them for. And they’re free! https://gizmodo.com/what-material-design-means-for-the-future-of-android-1595976211 Just published to Github, there are 750 of the neatly designed icons. They’ll fit nicely in Android, but you could use the…

The Best New Android Feature Is a Smarter Lock Screen

Brand new design, better battery life, seamless device switching! The newest version of Android brings a lot to the table. But its best feature is a little further under the surface: Smart lock screens that will let you be super secure without ever entering a PIN again. Teased back at Google I/O but now appearing…

Here’s How the New Gmail App Will Finally Tame Your Inboxes

Email is the bane of my existence. Trying to keep all my inboxes up to date and organized often feels like a full-time job. I’ve tried a couple of email clients now and nothing seems to work just the way I want it, but this leaked view of Gmail’s Lollipop makeover, first spotted by Android…

This Short Film Explains Our Fascination With Talking to Computers

Using names like Siri, Cortana, and Google Now, advanced algorithms and technologies that would have baffled engineers and scientists half a century ago now rest in the palm of our hands. Talking with technology is the future of computing—mainly because that’s the way we’re built to communicate. Google’s short eight-minute documentary, Behind the Mic: The…

Get the Most From Your Chromebook Even When It’s Offline

Some folks would have you believe that, without an Internet connection, your spiffy new Chromebook only slightly less useful than the box it came in, but that’s simply not true. They may not be able to match a MacBook’s performance, but these lightweight laptops are far from helpless when the connectivity runs dry. Here’s most…

Nexus Player Pulled From Google Play Store Over FCC Certification

It’s been a rollercoaster day for Google fans: first, the new Nexus Player and Nexus 9 pre-orders went live on the Play Store; but just a couple of hours later, Google’s set-top box was pulled, apparently because of its lack of FCC certification. As Android Police points out, the Nexus Player’s page on the Play…

Ready for Google’s new monster tablet, the Nexus 9? You can now pre-order one from Google, HTC, Amazon, or Best Buy.