Here's a very simple YouTube feature that's really useful. YouTube started to add a "play" Unicode character to the title of the YouTube page, but only when the video is playing. Pause the video and the "play" character disappears. It's a great way to find a "noisy" tab, especially if you open more than one YouTube video.
The "play" symbol is actually the black right-pointing triangle Unicode character. It's small, subtle and it's better than an animated favicon.
Here's an example: there are 2 YouTube tabs in the screenshot below. In the first tab there's a paused video, while in the second tab there's a video that's playing.
Google's online music service started to suggest better tag values for the songs you've uploaded. If you right-click a song or an album and select "edit info", you might see some suggested values for the album's name, the track number, genre or even the artwork. Click the suggested value to use it or click "use suggestions" to add all the suggested values, then click "save".
There's no magic "fix all my tags" button, so you need to manually fix the tags for each song or album. Google's suggestions aren't always great, so maybe it's better this way.
Let's say you want to embed a long YouTube video, but you only need a short excerpt from that video. The Nexus 7 & Chromecast Press Event video has 64 minutes, but you only want to embed the part about Android stats from 02:50 to 06:28.
When you click the play button, YouTube will only play the excerpt you've selected. This works for both the Flash player and the HTML5 player. Visitors can always use the seek bar and skip to other part of the video or continue to watch the video.
Who said that Google Cast is only for files stored online? Koushik Dutta, a CyanogenMod developer, wrote an Android app that lets you watch videos from your phone or tablet on your TV.
The application is not yet publicly available, but it's not difficult to guess that it uses a local web server. "It's heavily leveraging another project that I've been working on for the better part of 2 years," says the author. The project is probably AndroidAsync.
Here's a demo:
I'm sure we'll see Koushik's app or a similar app in the Google Play Store pretty soon. It will make Chromecast more useful. The next step would be to mirror the device, but that's a lot more complicated.
Right now, Chromecast is only available in the US, at least officially. If you're not in the US, you can try eBay and buy one for $45-70 + shipping fees.
Speaking of Chromecast, it's interesting to know that it doesn't run Chrome OS. It's based on the Android TV code. "It's actually a modified Google TV release, but with all of the Bionic / Dalvik stripped out and replaced with a single binary for Chromecast. Since the Marvell DE3005 SOC running this is a single core variant of the 88DE3100, most of the Google TV code was reused. So, although it's not going to let you install an APK or anything, its origins: the bootloader, kernel, init scripts, binaries, are all from the Google TV."
It looks like Google really wants to close the gap between Android and iOS and add all the missing features. After Google Play Games and Google Cast, Google will add a feature that lets you find your lost phone. There are many third-party apps that offer this feature (some are even included by hardware manufacturers), but nothing beats a built-in feature like "Find my iPhone", especially when it's free and easy to use.
"If you ended up dropping your phone between those couch cushions, Android Device Manager lets you quickly ring your phone at maximum volume so you can find it, even it's been silenced. And in the event that your phone or tablet is out of earshot (say, at that restaurant you left it at last night), you can locate it on a map in real time. (...) If your phone can't be recovered, or has been stolen, you can quickly and securely erase all of the data on your device."
This service will be available later this month for all devices running Android 2.2 or later. It will integrate with your Google Account and you'll be able to install an app that lets you find and manage your devices.
If I were to guess, the service will be added to the next Play Services update. The app is updated automatically by Google Play Store and it requires Android 2.2 or later. Now it also has an icon: you can find it as Google Settings, which groups various settings related to Google+, Google Play Games, location, search, ads, app scanning.
What other standard iOS features would you like to see in Android? I really like "scroll to top", battery percentage in the status bar, changing permissions for each app (location, contacts, photos), "do not disturb" and the full iCloud backup. Some are available in CyanogenMod, TouchWiz, HTC Sense or in third-party apps.
Have you ever lost your phone in between the couch cushions or forgot it in a restaurant? Or maybe searching for your phone before you rush out the door is part of your morning routine? Let the new Android Device Manager help you out! It's one of a few simple features you can use to keep your device—and the data you store inside—safe and secure.
Locate and ring your misplaced device If you ended up dropping your phone between those couch cushions, Android Device Manager lets you quickly ring your phone at maximum volume so you can find it, even if it's been silenced. And in the event that your phone or tablet is out of earshot (say, at that restaurant you left it at last night), you can locate it on a map in real time.
Protecting your personal information and data While losing your phone can be stressful, Android Device Manager can help you keep your data from ending up in the wrong hands. If your phone can’t be recovered, or has been stolen, you can quickly and securely erase all of the data on your device.
Availability and getting started This service is now available on devices running Android 2.2 or above; to use it, you also will need to be signed into your Google Account. There will also be an Android app to allow you to easily find and manage your devices. Stay tuned!
Posted by Benjamin Poiesz, Product Manager, Android
Updated August 7 to reflect availability of Android Device Manager. Access it at www.android.com/devicemanager.
After so much hype, many people were disappointed to see Motorola's first phone influenced by Google. Motorola was acquired by Google two years ago for $12.5 billion, but the real reason why Google bought Motorola wasn't clear. Motorola's patents weren't that useful, Motorola's market share is declining and the company continues to lose money every quarter.
Moto X is supposed to be Motorola's "hero" device, the flagship that shows the new direction of the company. More than 70 Google employees work at Motorola: from Motorola's new CEO, Dennis Woodside, to Steve Horowitz, Motorola's head of software and one of the original members of the Android team. "Nobody's buying products because of minor incremental improvements to Android. So let's rely on what the Android team does and build experiences that will leverage Google services," says Steve Horowitz.
Motorola's phones now use tweaked version of the stock Android. There are some changes, some new apps and some new versions of the stock apps, but they're added on top of the stock Android, so you'll see faster updates. Motorola not only uses Google's Android software, but it tries to create hardware that makes it easy to use Google's software and enhances its features.
Moto X is assembled in the US, in a former Nokia factory. "Motorola placed its entire assembly operation for the X in Fort Worth, Texas. Components come from 16 states and countries around the world, but 2,000 or so workers assemble the phones in Texas and ship them all over America," informs The Verge. Phones are personalized using an online service called Moto Maker, which lets you select the color of the backplate, the front and of the volume buttons, add a signature, pick some matching headphones and make the phone your own. In the future, you'll also be able to pick a different material: wood instead of plastic. At launch, Moto Maker will be limited to AT&T. Motorola will open it to the other US carriers in the near future: Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular.
"When a car company allows you to choose your interior details or Nike allows you to design your own shoes, it creates what Moto X head product manager Lior Ron calls 'the Ikea effect.' 'Once you finish assembling it, you're emotionally attached to that furniture,' Ron says. 'It's now yours. We see the same attachment here. You've basically gone through the process to build your phone - you are now emotionally attached to that phone.'"
The phone uses two low-power processors that are used by Moto X's most important features. Moto X is always listening, so you can say "ok google now" and then ask something. It's called touchless control and it always you to use your phone without having to touch it. The hotword feature is available in the Google Search app, but Moto X's hardware makes it more useful because you don't have to interact with the device first. There's also a gesture that quickly launches the camera app: just shake your wrist.
Moto X always shows the time and some notification icons. This feature works well because the phone has an AMOLED screen and black pixels are unlit, saving power.
So why are people disappointed? The phone doesn't have great specs: a 4.7-inch 720p AMOLED display, a dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.7GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 2200 mAh battery, 10 MP camera. So last year, you might say. A mid-range phone that costs the same as Samsung's Galaxy S4 or HTC One ($200 on contract for the 16GB version)? Non-removable battery and no SD card?
"We could go and make a higher-resolution screen, but it would just suck battery and nobody would know the difference," says Motorola's Jim Wicks. Most likely, Motorola couldn't source from Samsung a 1080p AMOLED screen and the 720p display was good enough. The dual-core CPU is cheaper, improves battery life and has a similar performance to the quad-core S4 Pro. It uses the same GPU from Nexus 4 and the new Nexus 7 and that's great. A phone is not about raw power, it's about responsiveness, battery life, ease of use. Most of the time, that raw power is left unused. Phones are more about GPU than CPU because responsiveness is more important than performance.
Moto X is not about specs, it's about experience and that's a lesson from the Apple school of thought. Specs are great, but only if they're actually used to build a great experience. A 400+ PPI 1080p screen and a quad-core CPU have their drawbacks and they're probably overkill. Apple's products don't use them, but they work well and are often more responsive than Android devices. The secret is probably software optimization and the integration between hardware and software.
"We've done additional optimizations on top of that such as optimizing the entire Linux user space to move it to an ARM instruction set, cache optimization, Dalvik just-in-time optimization, and we've changed the file system. It's full hardware-software integration to deliver best-in-class performance," says Iqbal Arshad, Motorola's senior vice president of engineering.
It's more about a high-end experience than high-end specs and that's hard to measure. People read the specs and assume that the phone with the fastest processor is the best one, but that's not always true. It's also about tricks that make the device appear more responsive than it really is, tricks that conserve battery, animations that make the experience more pleasant, squeezing every bit of performance from the hardware.
Moto X tries win the specs wars by ignoring it and focusing on something else: the human factor. Patriotism, esthetics, customization, efficiency - all of these try to make the phone more appealing and less intimidating. It's a new Motorola and they're just getting started.
"The Moto X will go on sale in the United States at the end of August or the beginning of September for a suggested retail price of $199.99 to customers who sign a two-year contract at five of the biggest U.S. mobile network operators," informs Reuters.
