Google Play Music All Access and Books expand to new regions

Content stores can be pretty tough work, mostly because of all the licenses that need to be acquired for all of the different countries of the world. While Google Play has done well to get on par with iTunes as far as its app store, Google is still lagging a bit behind in terms of international support for other media like Books and Music. Google is finally taking the conquest of Europe more serious and has expanded the availability of its Play Books and All Access Music services to 13 new countries. The latest ones to get access to to the Books and Music part of the Google Play Store are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Sweden. Users in those countries now have access to millions of books and songs in the newly redesigned Play Store, which was launched a few days ago. The newly added 13 countries now join Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States to make a total of 27 countries that have access to the Google Play Store Books. Google Play Music is currently available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, United States, and United Kingdom, in addition to the aforementioned list of countries. That's about another 27 million people that can now get in on All Access. 

Folks down in Australia and New Zealand will be the first outside of the U.S. to get Google's latest subscription music service, Google Play Music All Access. An update to a Google Play support document today lists the two countries as having the new service available, with little else to go on. Presumably the appropriate deals have been made to offer the entire music collection available here in the U.S. to folks down under. All Access seems to be pretty well-received so it's great to see the service expand outside of the states. Hopefully this paves the way for additional countries to get the service in the coming months, as over a dozen countries currently have access to the basic user-upload Google Play Music features. 

Google is offering a special deal for early adopters – Australians who sign up by August 31 will pay just AU$9.99 per month (after a thirty-day trial period), and early bird New Zealanders will pay NZ$10.99 per month following the free thirty-day trial. Those who sign up after the end of August will pay AU$11.99 and NZ12.99 respectively. Google also reminds potential customers that they can upload up to 20,000 songs from their current collection, though the service's real claim to fame is the ability to stream, ad-free, unlimited amounts of music (or as much as your data connection can handle).

Google Q2: revenues up, 900M Androids, Moto still struggling

Google, the golden child of the Internet, got some disappointing grades on its report card. The revenues for Q2 of this year are up 19% year on year to $14.1 billion, but come short of analysts' expectations of $14.4 billion.

Income was $3.123 billion overall (down from Q1 this year and Q2 last year) with an operating margin of 22% (also down). Google's income for the quarter was just about the same as last year (but with a lower operating margin) and it's Motorola that weighs it down with a loss of $342 million.

As for Google's platforms, Larry Page, CEO and co-founder, calls Android and Chrome "no-brainers". There are 900 million Androids with 1.5 million joining them each day. They have downloaded 50+ billion apps and counting.

Chrome (the browser, not the OS) is doing great too – 750 million users. Chrome OS and Chromebooks are on the rise, despite the declining PC market, but Page didn’t provide any specific numbers here. No numbers on Google+ either.

Page once again teased that Motorola has something great in store (he's been testing the products, like Eric Schmidt), but once again said nothing of what we can expect. Hopefully, we'll learn more next week.

Google's core money maker – ads – is getting a revamp called Enhanced Campaigns, aimed at fixing the mobile ads market, which is ailing (ad prices were already cheap, but they've fallen further). The effect of Enhanced Campaigns should be felt next quarter.

You can read Larry Page's speech from the conference call here and listen to the call itself below:

Google launches Chrome Launcher

Google has quietly launched its Chrome App Launcher for Windows. Originally built for Chrome OS in an effort to replicate some of the taskbar or dock functionality in traditional desktop operating systems, the software acts as a hub for all your Chrome apps, allowing users to launch them quickly from the desktop. The release covers both Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems, though support for OS X is in the works. The launcher will sit on your desktop taskbar and provide a quick way to access the Chrome Store, and any installed app that works with Google's browser. It also lets you manage certain privacy, network, language and download settings, and supports switching between multiple Google accounts -- so when you are signed in, Gmail will directly load your inbox, Drive will show your saved documents and files, and so on. At first glance the App Launcher is nothing more than a collection of links that load on your browser. But with the introduction of packaged apps and desktop notifications, Google is slowly building something that could be seen as a more serious threat to established desktop platforms. If you are unfamiliar with packaged apps, they’re essentially apps written in standard web languages, but they run outside of the browser as self contained software that can work offline and interface with hardware or network devices. Combined with desktop notifications, they look and act like any other normal app, except they are cross-platform compatible and always up to date. Two recent high-profile examples are Pocket and Wunderlist. If packaged apps actually catch on with developers, Google’s App Launcher will go a long way easing the transition from native Windows or Mac apps to web-based Chrome apps, and perhaps convincing some users that it’s possible to live with a web-centric platform like Chrome OS. Time will tell if the strategy plays out. For now, if you want to give the Chrome App Launcher a try, I suggest you also install a few packaged apps with it. You can find all of them under the packaged apps category in the Chrome Web Store. Aside from the two aforementioned ones, other notable examples include Reditr, 500px, Text, and Spelunkly. After months of behind-the-scenes teases it has arrived finally. The Chrome OS feature—ported over to the Chrome for Windows developer channel in February—wasn’t available through a search of the Chrome Web Store or advertised on the site’s front page at this writing, but Windows users can install it now by navigating directly to the Chrome App Launcher page inside Chrome’s app store. First spotted by Engadget, the new feature is Google’s incursion into the desktop PC, creating a self-sufficient Chrome ecosystem inside Microsoft’s OS. The Chrome App Launcher lets you directly fire up any Chrome Web app or packaged app right from the Windows taskbar—even when Chrome itself isn’t running. Packaged apps are HTML 5-based standalone desktop apps based on Chrome that don’t look anything like your Web browser. There are no tabs, URL address bars, or bookmarks, but these apps do rely on Chrome’s underlying infrastructure and are installed via the Chrome Web Store. It’s still early days for packaged apps, but there are a number you can try out, such as a generic text editor and an IRC client, as well as known quantities like Cut the Rope, the Economist, and Weather Bug Like the app launcher, anyone using the stable version of Chrome will have to navigate to each packaged app directly, as they were not discoverable in the Chrome Web Store at this writing. Google added a packaged apps section to the Chrome Web Store in May for anyone running the dev channel version of Chrome. But that section of the Web store had yet to go live Friday morning, despite the soft launch of the Chrome App Launcher. The two features go together like peanut butter and jelly, so it’s odd that Google has made the app launch available without the new packaged apps section in the Web Store. Perhaps the search giant plans on officially rolling out the app launcher and the packaged apps section of the Web store later on Friday. Actually installing the Chrome App Launcher is a lot easier than it was when we first looked at the new Chrome feature in February. All you have to do now is agree to install the launcher and almost automatically it will show up in your taskbar. Earlier versions required you to install a packaged app first before you could install the app launcher. So far the Chrome App Launcher is only available for Windows users in official builds of Google’s Web browser. In May, the search giant added the launcher to Chromium for Mac (the open source version of Chrome), while Linux users are still left on the sidelines. It looks like the Google Chrome App launcher is finally out of its developers preview mode, as the app is now available for all Windows users. The Google Chrome App launcher will place an app on the start page, taskbar and desktop for Windows 8 and in menu bar for Windows 7, which allows you to quickly access the browser, Chrome store, Gmail or any other application that works with the Google’s browser. Furthermore, you can also sync your apps, bookmarks, history, passwords and other settings across devices by signing in to chrome. Unfortunately, there is no word on the availability of the launcher on OS X and Linux at the moment.

Gmail gets a full screen compose view

Google has just given in to the substantial number of Gmail users who’ve been pissed off at them ever since they went and changed how users go about composing emails, and I can already hear the “THANK GOD”s and “FREAKING FINALLY”s beginning to pour in. “After Gmail’s new compose rolled out to everyone in March, many of you sent us requests for features you’d like to see added. We listened carefully to your feedback and as as result, the new compose now offers a full-screen option,” says Google. Yep, Gmail’s new compose box now has a full-screen option.  But wait – it gets better. Google is also giving you the option to set full-screen compose as your default. Just check the “default to full screen” option in your “more options” menu. Google began testing the new compose box, which appears in the bottom right-hand corner of your window, way back in October of 2012. When they finally rolled it out to all users in March – well, let’s just say that some user were a little less than pleased. If you don’t yet see the full-screen option, be patient. Google says that it’ll be rolling out to all users over the next couple of days. Google redesigned its popular email client in March with few new additions and tweaks. One of the notable changes was the new compose, which was available in your inbox as a pop-up window. Now, Google has started to roll out a new full-screen compose window, which fills your entire display. The compose window can be switched to full-screen by clicking on the expand button in the top right or you can also set full-screen as your default by selecting default full-screen option in the more menu that can found in the bottom right.

Nexus 7 : second generation leaks out in Photo and Video

Google is expected to unveil a follow-up to the Nexus 7 soon and this week some photos and video purporting to show the next-generation Android tablet turned up online, as did some rumoured specs and pricing information. Android Central has published the "first probable pictures of what we believe is the long-awaited successor to the Nexus 7," images the tech site said were leaked by an anonymous source. Separately, Android Central said it had learned that Google will price a 16GB version of the tablet at $229 (£150) and a 32GB version at $269 (£177). "First, a quick caveat: Ain't nothing official yet. Google's not announced anything, and we have no idea if what we see here is a finished product, or prototype," the site hedged before spilling some interesting details about the purported second-generation Nexus 7.  It's being made by Asus for Google, just like the original Nexus 7   The new tablet runs the yet-to-be-released Android 4.3  Android Central anticipates that there will be Wi-Fi-only models and versions capable of accessing cellular data network.   The new tablet sports a 7in LCD display, has dual speakers, and features two cameras — one more than the current Nexus 7 — a 1.2-megapixel, front-facing camera made by Lite-On Mobile and a 5-megapixel, rear-positioned camera from Chicony The unit viewed by Android Central is powered by Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chip on the Qualcomm APQ8064 logic board, though the site noted that other reports have the second-generation Nexus 7 using a Snapdragon 600 processo The next Nexus 7 may have "a ridiculously whopping 4GB of DDR3L RAM," per Android Central, though "we're not 100 percent sure on that, 2GB wouldn't surprise us at all," the site added  The power button and volume rocker are in the same place along the side of the new tablet as they are on the current Nexus 7, and the next-gen device sports a microUSB port just like its predecessor The Android Central leak comes shortly after Google sent out invites for a July 24 event in San Francisco, which will feature an appearance from Sundar Pichai, Google's chief of Android and Chrome.  Some Google watchers also expect the company to release a new version of its mobile operating system next week, but Android 4.3 is more likely than Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, which is rumoured for an October unveiling. ith Google's chitchat breakfast event with Sundar Pichai coming up next week, speculation has been rampant that a new Nexus 7 could be imminent. Just like clockwork, the leaks are beginning to flow. A new video purports to show the second edition of Google's 7-inch slate, and it's accompanied by some snapshots. The device certainly looks legit with the sideways Nexus branding on the back, matching a previous leak. An Asus logo is also clearly visible at the bottom. The device again has a 7-inch LCD, but the resolution isn't apparent in any of the pictures. The overall design looks almost identical to the first N7, but there are two speakers on the back instead of one. We're expecting 2GB of RAM, and 16/32GB storage options. The rest of the specs are unknown. Start saving your pennies, everyone. Google will be asking for your money very soon. Hot on the heels of the pricing details from yesterday The unit from the leaked images is said to boot Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. You can see a video of the alleged second generation Nexus 7 below. The second generation Nexus 7 is expected to break cover next week, on July 24 at an event in San Francisco.

Android 4.3 update for the Nexus 4 detailed, shown on video

The Android 4.3 update has been floating around for a while, with the first ROM being leaked for the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition, ironically even before Google’s own Nexus device. As you probably` known, the same update has now been leaked for the Nexus 4 and we now get to learn what has changed since Android 4.2 in more detail. Admittedly, there is not a lot of new stuff here but here’s what has been discovered so far.

First of all, there is said to be an improvement in the touch response on the Nexus 4. Users who previously complained about lack of responsiveness from the display are reporting improvement after updating to 4.3, so there’s that to look forward to. There are some improvements to the connectivity features. The Bluetooth now gets support for the low energy standard, which reduces power consumption when used with other Bluetooth devices that support this standard. This standard is usually used by devices such as fitness accessories and smart watches that don’t need to transfer a lot of data but need a constant connection. Meanwhile, a new setting for Wi-Fi lets applications quickly switch on the Wi-Fi to get a quick lock on your location and then switch it back off without bothering you to enable Wi-Fi (E.g., Google Maps). There have been some changes to the dialer as well. You can now enter numbers and the app will match it to your saved contacts and suggest numbers accordingly. This feature has been in custom OEM skins since eons but it’s good to see it finally being added to stock Android. You can also enter pauses in the number now through the menu below. The camera app has also been updated. It’s essentially the same one we saw on the Google Play Editions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One, where the UI appears as an arc above your thumb instead of the previous circle. The UI now also rotates to landscape even if auto-rotation has been disabled, something which wasn’t possible before.

There are some developer focused changes as well, such as a running graph on the screen that tells you when an app dips below the magic 60fps framerate so you can tune your app accordingly a list that shows every notification you have received in the past even after you remove it from the notification drawer.

This is all that has been found so far. You can check the video below for a demonstration of some of these features.

 Leaked Android 4.3 Jelly Bean is also available (unfooicial download) but it might cause you to lose your data. Why be in a hurry when the official update is days away 

Google TV via Internet instead of cable TV ?

If Google has its way, you might someday get cable television the same way you get Gmail: Through any ordinary internet connection. Foreshadowing a new challenge to entrenched cable and satellite providers, Google is one of several technology giants trying to license TV channels for an internet cable service, according to people with direct knowledge of the company's efforts.

No deals are imminent. But Google's recent meetings with major media companies that own channels are a sign of the new-found race to sell cable-like services via the internet, creating an alternative to the current television packages that 100 million American households buy from companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Intel is hard at work on one such service and companies like Sony and Microsoft have previously shown interest in the same idea, called an "over the top" service because the channels would ride on top of existing broadband connections. They need support from the channel owners, though, and so far that has been tepid.

Google, which also owns YouTube, the world's largest online video site, declined to comment on its television interest. But by instigating conversations with channel owners about a service that would compete with the likes of Comcast, the company is taking a different tack than its rival Apple, which has been trying to collaborate with both channel owners and their distributors on a TV offering.

"Google feels the need to beat Apple to the punch," said one of the people with direct knowledge of the meetings, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Apple's thinking, according to these people, is that any next-generation television service must be set up in partnership with existing distributors, in part for quality assurance reasons. A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision's channel line-up. "Apple's working within our current ecosystem," one of the people said.

Google Maps now for iPad , update to iPhone maps

Ever since the Google Maps application got separated from iOS and started life as a standalone app on the App Store, it has only been available on the iPhone with iPad users having to rely on Apple Maps for navigation. The latest update, however, fixes that and Google Maps is now available on the iPad as well. The iPad version makes good use of that big beautiful canvas and hides all the controls and just keeps the search bar in the top left corner. The UI is similar to the one on the new web version and the Android app. Additional options are hidden in a drawer on the left, accessed by tapping a button on the top left. Other changes in this update include:

● Enhanced navigation including live traffic updates and incident reports

● Explore: A new way to browse and discover popular local places to eat, drink, shop, play and sleep

● Simple 5-star ratings and reviews from friends, plus expert Zagat content 

● Great deals from your favorite brands with Google Offers

● Indoor maps with walking directions for malls, transit stations, airports and more

The update is now available for download from the App Store.

Improved discoverability of places is one feature that Google’s been trumpeting in this update. A new Explore feature lets you quickly search for specific types of locations; tap in the search field, and then tap on the Explore card to bring up options for Eat, Drink, Shop, Play, and Sleep. Each of those is divided into a number of sub-categories—so, for example, under Eat, you’ll find restaurants, fast food, bakeries, ice cream, and so on. Tapping on any of the categories will then show you cards—Google’s big on cards—for the sub-categories, each with nearby places that fit the bill; you can tap ‘View’ all for a full list of those types of places.

The new Explore feature lets you find nearby locations in a variety of categories and sub-categories.

In another improvement, Google has standardized its review process, so that each location now has a simple rating of one to five stars, alongside content that Google pulls in from Zagat. The company’s also integrated Google Offers, which provides deals and bargains from certain brands, though I haven’t yet encountered any.

Google’s also changed up the list of quick-access shortcut icons it offers: It now lets you search, by default, for grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, and gas stations instead of restaurants, bars, and so on, which are now covered by Explore. (A much longer list is still accessible, though I wish they’d make the first slots more customizable).

As per iOS 6's own Maps, Google Maps will now show you live construction alerts and traffic incidents.

Lest you think that mapping has fallen by the wayside here, there are a couple of nice enhancements to navigation. For one, Google Maps now includes a bicycle layer that shows you biking paths in your area, highlighted in green, and offers turn-by-turn bicycling directions. And, in a rare bit of catching up with Apple Maps, there are now live listings of traffic incidents and construction—tapping on one will give you details.

Perhaps the niftiest new feature—on a scale of one-to-nifty—is Google Maps’s new indoors mapping feature. No longer do you have to wander around your local mall or an unfamiliar airport, trying to figure out where a particular shop or restaurant is located: Google Maps has that information baked right in—if you zoom in far enough, you can even toggle between multiple floors. However, some of this info is spotty right now—one of my local malls showed only an incomplete floor plan.

Indoor mapping means never again having to wander around until you find a Directory kiosk in your local mall.

While the iOS version of Google Maps for the most part maintains parity with its Android counterpart, there is one notable omission in the iOS edition: On Google’s own platform, Maps will automatically route around traffic problems. That’s not available in the current update for iOS, but Google has intimated that it’s due to come, uh, down the road, if you will.

Just in case iOS-based mapping isn't your bag, you can also check out the new and improved Google Maps interface on the Web, which the company made available to all users on Wednesday.

Google ads to be blocked from sites offering pirated content

Websites offering pirated content will be blocked from offering adverts from Google and other big web advertisers, in a US scheme intended to strangle illicit revenues.

The initiative will mean copyright holders from the music, film and other creative industries will be able to alert the big ad networks if their ads are appearing on sites offering links to pirated content or counterfeit goods.

The British music industry body, the BPI, is also working with the InternetAdvertising Bureau in the UK on a scheme that has yet to be announced which will involve a central database of piracy sites for ad networks, agencies and brands to refer to and avoid when planning campaigns.

Pirate sites often make large amounts of money from Google and other advertisers because millions of users visit their sites every month – and often have the sort of age profile that web advertisers are keen to reach.

One British site that linked to pirated content, Surfthechannel, made as much as £35,000 per month from on-site adverts before its owner was jailed. Emails from The Pirate Bay revealed ahead of its founders' trial some years ago showed it was offered £65,000 per month to run casino and poker ads.

Such sites tend to use adverts as a revenue source because it means they don't have to set up merchant accounts with organisations such as PayPal, Visa and Mastercard to process payments from customers who might anyway be unwilling to pay them for content.

In July 2012, Google collaborated with British collecting society PRS for Music and BAE Systems Detica on research which indicated that advertising funded 86% of music filesharing sites.

That has led to campaigns by musicians including David Lowery and former Longpigs vocalist Crispin Hunt to stop advertising networks and major brands allowing their adverts on pirate sites.

A study by the University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Laboratory in January found that Google and Yahoo were two of the biggest advertisers on pirate sites. Though both companies include clauses in their contracts forbidding sites from displaying their ads if they help piracy, the responsibility for checking tends to lie with the owner of pirated content.

The new scheme, for which content owners in Hollywood and the music industry have been pushing for some time, was brokered by the US Intellectual Property Enforcement co-ordinator Victoria Espinel and ad industry body the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The participants include Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, 24/7 Media, Adtegrity, Condé Nast and SpotXchange.

"We believe that this is a positive step and that such efforts can have a significant impact on reducing online piracy and counterfeiting," said Espinel in a statement, while warning the ad networks to respect "privacy, free speech, fair process, and competition" when implementing the guidelines.

The networks will use "best practice" guidelines to prevent their ads appearing on sites accused of facilitating digital piracy and physical counterfeiting of goods.

But it is unclear how actively they will police sites that haven't been reported to them by rights-holders. Comments by Dave Jacobs, AOL Networks senior vice president of publisher sales, suggested music and video copyright holders will still be expected to find and report sites.

"The best practices are intended to encourage and supplement, not replace, responsible and direct independent actions taken by intellectual property owners to enforce their intellectual property rights and are not intended to impose a duty on any ad network to monitor its network to identify offending websites," Jacobs said.

However, Google's vice president of public policy and government relations, Susan Molinari, said the search giant is proactive: "In 2012, we disabled ad serving to 46,000 sites for violating our policies on copyright infringing content, and shut down more than 82,000 accounts for attempting to advertise counterfeit goods," she said. "Nearly 99% of our account suspensions were discovered through our own detection efforts and risk models."

The BPI scheme has been in progress for a while. "I think we've all been a bit slow to get to grips with this, perhaps because we were focused on other targets," said BPI chief director Geoff Taylor in May.

The BPI has chosen to focus its energies in recent years on blocking individual piracy sites, going to the high court to force ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, Newzbin2, Kickass Torrents and others.

The debate over so-called "ad-sponsored piracy" has been rumbling for some time, particularly within the music industry, where Lowery has been a prominent campaigner highlighting the appearance of big brands' banner ads on piracy sites.

"If the future of music really is access to songs, rather than owning as many as we do nowadays, those services are all advertising-supported, and they're competing with these illegitimate sites for these ads," said Lowery at a public debate on the topic in May. "Spotify and Pandora should have probably rightfully got that advertising money."

Android 4.3 Jelly Bean expected to launch in San Francisco on July 24

Google has just sent out press invites for its Android event that'll be happening on July 24 at 19:00 GMT in San Francisco. The photo that the company attached simply reads "Please join us for breakfast with Sundar Pichai." Pichai, the VP of Android and Chrome, sure has some cool news to share regarding the next version of Google's mobile OS. Android 4.3 Jelly Bean has been out for a while now for the Google Play Store edition Samsung Galaxy S4. Hopefully, at the event happening next Wednesday, Google will unveil more changes to Android. Android 4.3 is said to still carry the Jelly Bean name. It seems that Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will be unwrapped at the next Google I/O. Additionally, the second-generation Nexus 7 tablet is expected to be announced. It's been heavily rumored to pack a 7" display of full HD resolution and a Snapdragon 600 CPU. ASUS is said to be responsible for building the next Nexus tablet. Sundar Pichai. Though this Googler is in charge of Chrome as a web browser and as an operating system as well, it’s far more likely that this July 24th event will center on Android itself, especially considering the several appearances of Android’s next-generation features in teasers for the Motorola-made smartphone Moto X. Google does own Motorola now, and the time between here and the release of the Moto X grows short, but it is more likely that Google would create a side-event like this to prepare the world for the software side of things before the smartphone is unveiled in full. Motorola’s hero phone will carry Google’s next edition of Android right out of the box, so to speak, but it’s just as important for the company to identify the software’s features for the rest of the Android-toting device universe. Now that Google works with the Nexus 4, HTC One Google Play edition, and Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play edition, this event will likely show software advances on this three-device range. They’ve also got two tablets with Nexus branding as well, of course. Recent rumblings about a reboot for the Google Nexus 7 are also a part of the list of possibilities for this event. If a new version of Android is in the mix, what better way to usher it in than with another new device?

Stay tuned

Google Play Store update

Google has pushed out a new visual update for the Play Store on the web and it is the most comprehensive UI overhaul so far. The store features a brand new interface throughout and also brings along some much needed speed improvement. Google updated the UI of the web portal for the Play Store this evening, and put the word out around 7:30PM EST On the homepage you can see they have gotten rid of the slideshow for apps on top and you simply start with recommended apps, games, movies, etc. tailored for you. If you want to see more, just click ‘See more’ on the side. The lists on the left have also been removed in the redesign. The homepage also tends to load content as you scroll down, as seen on the recent Play Store for Android update. Clicking on an app or any other link brings a quick loading animation and the page loads almost instantly, even on relatively slow connection, and significantly faster than the previous design. The new item page looks great, with details up top, screenshots in the middle and description below. Further down you’ll find the ratings and user reviews, along with similar items. You’ll notice that the compatibility list has been changed to a floating drop down list below the item name and that screenshots are now significantly bigger and higher resolution, although they do take much longer to load now. They also load in full resolution regardless of whether you want to click on them or not, which is a waste of bandwidth if you don’t end up opening them. There is a My Orders page hidden in the gear icon on the top right, where you will find a list of all items you have purchased from the Play Store, free or paid. The Settings page shows your devices and you can now choose to rename them or even hide them from appearing in the compatibility list in app pages. This is a boon if, like me, you have a million devices assigned to your account and want to get rid of old devices that are no longer in use. The latest Play Store update is definitely a step in the right direction and not just a visual enhancement over it’s predecessor but also functionally superior. Google's updated Play Store includes mention of Glass, implying that the company's headset will be managed through the store soon. Users who have linked Glass with their Google account have been seeing the device in the site's "compatible devices" list when viewing apps. The change is part of a visual overhaul of the Play Store that wasannounced at Google IO, bringing the web view in line with the company's Android app. Like the recently-updated Android storefront, the new design features Google Now-style cards, making everything look a little more organized.

USERS COULD DISCOVER AND INSTALL APPS STRAIGHT FROM GLASS

Bringing Glass support to the Play Store would streamline managing the device significantly. To install apps to Glass users are currently required to log into a Glass-specific portal on another device. Android and Me posted a screenshot revealing that a Play Store application is also on its way to the device, opening the door to on-device app installation for the first time. The screenshot shows a short message noting that "you have not opened the Google Play Store app recently on this device. Please open it and try again." Play Store support could also open the door to native apps on Glass. None of the apps released during Google's soft launch of the headset have been native APK files (the standard packaging format for Android applications). Instead, Glass currently only supports "Glassware" applications, which are fairly basic in their scope. A recent Glass update brought a full web browser and contact management support, but close examination revealed that full APK support could be on the way. Google employs a one-app strategy for Android — the same app runs on a 4-inch smartphone or a 10-inch tablet, with the layout expanding to fill the display. While it's not sure that we'll see regular apps on Glass's tiny display, Google could allow developers to code their apps to run across smartphones, tablets, and Glass. Even if native apps never happen, putting Glassware apps within the Play Store makes a lot of sense; giving users access to all of Google's apps, books, music, and videos in one location.

Whats exactly is changed

A Pretty Face

The new design is striking. It looks more like Android, but still feels at home on a larger screen. There are cards everywhere and the design is much cleaner overall. There are fewer tabs to cycle through, and lists are less scattered. Most of the things you'll care about are right in the middle. The web-based Play Store is also quite a bit faster in most places with this update. It makes use of AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to make page loads faster. The Play Store doesn't have to completely reload the page each time you click something – it only loads the things that have changed. Check out Artem's rundown of what that means. The new home tab has various editor's picks and recommendations. There are also top charts and new release tabs. This is a bit less information-dense than the old UI, but it's probably better for discoverability. By simplifying the UI, it looks like Google might have ditched a lot of features we've all come to rely on. Is that worth having a prettier Play Store?

The My Apps List Is Almost Useless

In the last version of the Play Store, we had a handy My Apps page that broke down your apps by device. You could see what needed updating, and push it down to the device from the web. There were also remote uninstalls (a great feature). All of that is gone now, and that makes me sad. The My Apps page is now a single, giant scrolling list of all your apps. If you download all the things (and if you're reading this, you probably do) this feature is almost completely useless now. The page takes much longer to load if you have a ton of apps, and scrolling is sluggish. There's no option to see what's installed on each of your devices, and no update/uninstall options. Check out the old version below. Some of these features were actually fairly new, so it's odd Google would just kill them off. I can understand removing something if no one was using it, but removing the device-specific lists seems foolish. It makes the page a mess.

Wishlists Hit The Web

Yes, the wishlist is no longer restricted to devices. You can view and edit the wishlist through the web store. Every app listing has a wishlist button that can be used to add or remove an app from the list. Accessing the wishlist is a bit strange. The link is in the sidebar, but only on the main Play Store page. I don't know why it isn't always visible in that floating sidebar, but that's how Google is doing it. This is just a list, though. You can't bulk remove content from it. It only links you to the apps, which you then remove with the button. So it would be a good idea to not overload your wishlist. App Listings are Prettier, But Missing The Little Things The first thing you'll notice is that app listings are great looking now. The icon is larger, and it's toward the middle next to the install and wishlist buttons. Additionally, the big feature image from the top of the old UI is no longer on the Play Store page at all. Why? No clue. Permissions used to have their own tab in the Play Store, but that's gone now. The only way to see the permissions an app requests it to hit the Install button. You don't have to actually install, but that popup has the permission list. When you do install apps, the new UI shows the last used date for every device, which the old one didn't. See below for comparison. The lists of similar apps, and those from the same developer are now scrollable lists. That's better for discovery, and the style jives with the new interface. This is a good change – it puts more information in front of you rather than less. The 30-day installation graph is missing, though. That's totally bizarre. It took up almost no space and was extremely useful.

Screenshots Are Totally Different

The screenshots are bigger and contained in a slick AJAX-based scrollable list. If you click on one or start scrolling, the image viewer expands to fill the available browser space. If you change the size of your window, the size of the blown up shot changes to match it. That's kind of neat. One drawback to the new screenshot viewer is that the escape key no longer exits full screen mode. Now you have to home in on the button in the upper right. The images are no longer PNGs with this update. Google has transitioned all Play Store images to the WebP format, which should load faster. If your browser doesn't support WebP, the Play Store falls back to PNG, but images will take about 10x longer to load. Again, we've got a whole post on this WebP and overall AJAX situation, so check that out for all the details.

Review Filters Are Gone, Along With Pagination

The previous version of the Play Store had sorting and filtering options for user reviews, but that appears to be gone now. You cannot choose to only see reviews from a certain device, star rating, latest version, or any other criteria. This is especially annoying if you're trying to find other users with your device to see if they might be seeing the same bug you are. You can only see two reviews next to the score breakdown chart. Click the arrow to scroll over, and the reviews do the same window filling trick from the screenshots. The current list seems to be in reverse chronological order. You can click through the reviews one seemingly random batch at a time. The old version was paginated with 10 pages, which was probably more usable.

Search Is Surprisingly Limited

When you perform a search from the top bar, the results are displayed in a nice-looking page of cards. However, there is no pagination at all. You scroll down and when you hit the 48th result, it just stops in the middle of a line. There is no arrow to go on to the next page, no infinite scroll – it's just done. These are all the search results you get. Better luck next time, apparently. As with the reviews, all the filtering options are gone here too. You used to be able to sort by popularity or relevance, for example. There was also a drop down where you could limit your search to paid or free apps. It's very weird Google would take this functionality out, especially if we're going to be limited to 48 results.

The Odds And Ends

There are a few other small changes we've noticed in the Play Store, including the translation bar. This used to be down at the bottom and translated the UI and the reviews. That's going to be a pain point for folks that need to see things in a different language. Additionally, before this rollout the old market.android URLs would redirect, but now they just 404. All these changes, and we still didn't see new features people have been asking for. Where are paid app filters? In-app purchase menus? App gifting? Nope. None of that. It looks like the revamped Play Store is rocking a slightly tweaked version of Roboto, though. It seems to have fewer glyphs than the "proper" Roboto versions, but we're going to go into detail on that in a separate post. The new Google Play web interface is much more attractive, but a lot of features were pruned in the process of redesigning it. It's unclear if any of these will be coming back, but this may very well be the way things are going to work from now on.

Overall, it just leads to more scrolling, but that's not so terrible. Screenshot images have been made larger, and the navigation tools on the left have been made dynamic so the options will change when you go to the various sections of the store. Best of all, the wishlist feature that has been in theAndroid version of the store for a while now has finally made it to the web, at least partially. You can add items to your wishlist, but you can't remove items, and the only way to get to your wishlist is with a link on the main page of the store, so you have to back out to get at that. 

As we said, lots of changes, but maybe not all for the best. But, given how quickly Google iterates, we're sure that our various issues will be sorted out soon enough. 

Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman with Motorola Moto X

Rumours about the Motorola Moto X have been getting more and more intensive theses days and we even managed to get a glimpse of the upcoming smartphone from the Google-owned company. The latest bit is particurlarly interesting though - the Moto X smartphone was seen in the hands of no other than Eric Schmidt, Google's Executive Chairman. Mr Schmidt was spotted using the handset at the on-going Allen & Co. annual conference in Sun Valley and judging by the quality of the shots, he wasn't trying very hard to hide it.The images give us a clear idea of what the upcoming smartphone from Motorola is going to look like. We didn't get any confirmation of the previously leaked specs though. As you might recall the Motorola X is said to sport a 720p display and a 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset along with 2 GB of RAM, 10 megapixel rear camera and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. We have another image of the Moto X, this time showing the smartphone from a much closer distance. We can make out the smooth plastic at the back along with the LED flash and the loudspeaker grille. However, since there is no label next to the camera, we are not able to confirm the resolution of the sensor used in the camera for now. As we already know, Motorola X is going to be assembled in United States and the smartphone is expected to start shipping later this summer. @GSMArena Thankyou

Google Maps brings back ofline caching to its maps

Google just did a complete about-face with its new Android Google Maps app after announcing July 10 that the latest version no longer includes capabilities to use the maps offline when users don't have Internet access.Early on July 11, Google responded to user complaints about the offline maps omission and announced that it would again add the feature to the latest Maps app, beginning immediately."Based on user feedback on offline maps, we pushed an update late last night to the new Google Maps app for Android," a Google spokesman said Google also posted a Google+ announcement about its response."We've been happy to hear so many of you enjoying the interface and features of the new Google Maps app for Android, but we know some of you are missing an easy way to access maps offline," the post states. "That's why our engineering team has been working around the clock to add a 'Make this map area available offline' card below the search box for easier access. And, if you still want some #thumbercise, typing 'ok maps' will work too!"The new version, featuring the reintroduced offline maps capabilities, will begin rolling out globally today, the company said.Google had announced July 10 that the new Maps app for Android is getting a new "explore" option that allows users to visually browse and discover new places without typing. Instead, users can tap the search box, and they'll see pop-up "cards" that display nearby places to eat, drink, sleep and shop. In addition, users will get enhanced capabilities that can help them navigate around traffic, with traffic details that can describe what is happening on nearby roads.At the same time, though, the July 10 announcement also slated several Maps features for a demise, including the offline maps and the Latitude and check-ins features.They were to be being replaced with location sharing and check-ins to Google+ for Android (coming soon to iOS) to provide similar services, the post stated. Google had told users in the July 10 post that they could still access offline maps by entering "OK Maps" into the search box when viewing the area where they were traveling. In addition, that post stated, "My Maps" functionality was also removed in the new app but it is slated for return to future versions of the app. Users were critical of the moves on the Google+ page and Google apparently listened to the feedback. Users were just as happy about the company's change of heart and thanked Google after it announced the turnaround.That initial feedback caused Google to change its course, the company spokesman told  in a follow-up conversation. "After seeing some of the comments and reactions of users around the world who were missing the offline functionality, our engineering team worked around the clock to develop an easier way to cache a map for offline use," the spokesman stated. The new Google Maps for Android builds on the design the company introduced for the iPhone last December and improves on it with a few useful search and navigation features, according to the company. The new version is the first dedicated app for Android tablets and iPads. The new app will run on Android devices with Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean versions of the operating system. The Apple version will support iOS 6+ when it is available in the future. - See more at:

Interfaces aside, this new Android release has a few tricks that its iPhone counterpart doesn’t have (quite yet):

§  Realtime traffic rerouting — If an accident happens on the road ahead and an alternative route would now be the faster one, Maps will reroute accordingly.

§  Traffic Incident Reports — If an accident is reported, its location and description will appear on the map. Curiously, Google says neither this feature nor the aforementioned rerouting make use of the Waze technology Google acquired last month.

§  A new interface optimized for tablets

§  Zagat reviews — Making use of Google’s 2011 acquisition of Zagat, Maps now pulls Zagat reviews and lists directly into the interface. If the restaurant you’re looking at is on Zagat’s “Best Of San Francisco” list, for example, it’ll be marked as such and provide a quick link to the full list.

§  Business review averages now show as numbers (e.g. 4.3) rather than just stars, because, as Google Maps director Daniel Graf put it to me earlier, “the [real world] difference between a 4.3 and a 4.6 can be huge”

Don’t be sweatin’ too hard over the lack of realtime traffic rerouting and all that other stuff on your platform, though, iOS users; from what I gleaned during the meeting, it sounds like the iOS version of the update — complete with proper iPad support — is just waiting for Apple’s oh-so-crucial greenlight. Once it’s released, the Android and iOS builds of Maps should be a near feature-by-feature match for the first time in ages. As mentioned, though, there’s a catch or two. Dumping the old interface and bringing in a whole new one meant a few features got the boot, if only temporarily. The “Make Available Offline” button (which, as labeled, let you save maps for offline use) has been pulled. According to Graf, it just wasn’t quite ready. On the upside, I learned a little easter egg that kinda-sorta brings it back — more on that in a post later today.Google Maps has also dropped support for Latitude, the service that lets you share your location with friends and stalk them accordingly (with permission, of course). Instead, location sharing is getting integrated into Google Plus. The move is part of a wider closure of Latitude that will see Google moving out of check-ins and real-time location tracking, as well as offering these to developers via a set of APIs.

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http://pitstoptech.blogspot.in/2013/07/new-google-maps-spread-up-in-play-store.html