android mobile

Mr. Jingles, the Google+ mascot, has some special yellow glasses for the New Year's party. It's a joyful way to wish everyone a Happy New Year."I'll be up late tonight looking forward to 2014. Have fun and stay safe tonight," says Mr. Jingles.Click the icon and you should see some fireworks. Here's the animation:And here's the disco doodle from the Google homepage:Happy New Ye...

Congratulations to Cody Crone of Wranglerstar, our featured “On The Rise” partner for this month. You’ll see his channel and videos in the spotlight on the On The Rise homepage and the YouTube Spotlight channel today.Cody is a YouTube partner who left his "old city life" behind to explore the great outdoors. His channel also features his family and offers laughs along the way as he gives great advice...

Schemer was launched two years ago as an invite-only service for sharing goals and discussing them with other people. "A scheme is 'a secret or devious plan' (American Heritage Dictionary) and a schemer is a person who is involved in making these secret plans, so Google uses a mustache logo, a mesmerizing animated homepage, the Hitchcock font and catchy messages like 'You're looking diabolical!' or...

If you've tried the Auto Backup tool and you want to delete your photos, it won't be easy. You can go to the Auto Backup section of Google+ Photos, mouse over a photo, click the "tick" icon, select photos one by one and click "Delete". You can also select photos by dragging a "lasso", just like in your favorite file manager. You can also select a photo and Shift+click the last photo you want to select...

Google+ Photos has a sophisticated search feature, but some of the features aren't easy to find. For example, you can search photos by camera. Use queries like #canon, #nikon, #sony, #apple, #panasonic, #samsung, #nokia to find photos taken using a phone or camera from one of these companies. You can also use the name of the phone or camera, but not all of them work. These worked for me: #iphone4s,...

The latest version of Picasa for Windows and Mac installs a separate utility called Google+ Auto Backup. It's a simple tool that lets you select the folders that you want to backup automatically and even has support for SD cards. Google+ Auto Backup works in the background, much like Google Music Manager and Google Drive for desktop.The application uses the new Google Photos icon and, even though...

Google+ Photos has some filters you can use to refine your search results. Just click the search box or the small arrow icon and you can choose the source of the photos (Auto Backup, Hangouts, Google Drive, posts) or the type of results (Auto Awesome, photos of you, photospheres, videos). For some reason, Google uses hashtags and they don't work well all the time: the #Videos hashtag returns not only...

Auto Awesome brings more and more reasons to upload your photos to Google+. There's a new Auto Awesome gift: a video that highlights some of the best photos and videos you've taken in 2013. It's the year in review, a short video with nice music and cool transitions. You'll receive a notification in the Google bar when your video is ready."This time of year we reconnect with loved ones, and we reflect...

Mr. Jingles has a special Christmas costume. You can find it in the Google+ notification box: in Google+ and most Google services and in the Google+ app for iOS and Android.Here's the animation that's displayed when you click the icon. This is the "retina" double-sized version:There's also a reindeer version:I like the alternative text for Jingles icons: "Jingles - Mascot of a bell with a smiley face".{...

Google's mobile search interface shows some special decorations when you search for [Christmas], [Kwanzaa] or some queries that include them.They're not animated like the desktop decorations, but they fill the entire search results page.Google had a lot of festive decorations and Easter Eggs this holiday seasons: Hanukkah and Festivus, Christmas, Karaoke player for carols, Google Maps costume.{ Thanks,...

I've been reading Fred Vogelstein's book "Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution" (Amazon, Google Play) and realized that Android wasn't that important for Google until 2009-2010, when Motorola Droid and Nexus One were launched. It was an operating system designed to compete with Microsoft's Windows Mobile that ended up competing with Apple's iOS. Back in 2007 and 2008,...

If you use a long query, Google might ignore some of your keywords. Maybe there aren't many results that match all your keywords or maybe some of them are redundant.Google now shows a list of missing keywords below search results. Those words aren't included by the pages returned by Google, but the search results should still be relevant and useful.To force Google to always match a keyword, use quotes....

If you don't cast music, videos or photos, Google's Chromecast starts to display a slideshow with some beautiful photos. It's a screensaver you can't customize, but the photos are constantly updated by Google.The Chromecast screensaver is actually a web page you can access from any device, just in case you want to see some great photos or to save them. It's interesting that Google doesn't use Media...

The holidays are just a few days away, but Bay Area residents can still finish their last-minute shopping with Google Shopping Express. Whether you need gifts for loved ones, ingredients for a holiday dinner, or travel essentials for a trip home, Google Shopping Express gets your purchases delivered same-day so you can spend more time with family and friends. Google devices now available on Google...

The Pegman icon from the new Google Maps looks different: it now has a Santa hat. The classic Google Maps still shows the standard icon.Check this Google+ album to see almost 200 outfits created when Pegman was added to the new Google Maps.{ Thanks, Mukil....

To upload audio files to Google Play Music, you need to use Music Manager. It's only available as a native app for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, so you can't use it if you have a Chromebook or a mobile device.What if you need to upload a few songs and you don't want to wait until Music Manager syncs your files? What if you're using someone else's computer and you can't install Music Manager?Google...

Google's Sound Search widget for Android has a history page which shows all the songs that have been recognized by the application. You can also find this list inside Google Play Music if you go to this playlist. This is especially useful if you subscribe to the All Access feature and you can play all the songs.A Google screenshot shows the Sound Search playlist in the sidebar:"Hear a song you like...