Sunday, June 30, 2013

Android Central

Android Central

Reminder: June 30 is the last day to get Google Play Music All Access for $7.99 a month

Posted: 29 Jun 2013 01:34 PM PDT

Google Play Music

Save two dollars a month by signing up before Monday

Attention music fans! Google Play Music All Access will move from $7.99 per month to $9.99 per month starting July 1. If you want to save $2 a month on the life of the service you'll need to act before Monday rolls around. Signing up is easy -- just point your browser here (or click on the link with your phone) and follow the instructions for a free 30 day trial to see if the service works for you. Next month, your Google Wallet account will be billed for $7.99 for the next 30 days. Things continue until you cancel the service through the Google Play store or the Google Play Music app.

We've had a good long look at the service, which you will want to read if you're not familiar with how it works. In a nutshell, your 8 bucks gives you unlimited access to every song in Google Play, and you can stream them, pin them to your Android device, or play them through the web player as often as you like. When you find something you like, you can add it to your music library if you like for easy access the next time you want to hear it. In addition, you have access personalized radio stations with unlimited skips, and can see smart recommendations based on your listening history.

$2 every month adds up over time, so be sure to act if you think you'll be interested. Use the 30 day trial wisely, and if the service works out for you you'll be saving a nice chunk of change in the long run.

    

Apps of the Week: Financial Times, NewsBlur, Blank Lockscreen and more!

Posted: 29 Jun 2013 12:37 PM PDT

Apps of the Week

Another great set of apps to wrap up this month's Apps of the Week posts

It's Saturday afternoon, and that means it's time for another Apps of the Week post where we show off a few of our (currently) favorite apps. A handful of the Android Central writers have chimed in this week with an app that keeps them productive, entertained or just solves a problem that's bothering them on a particular device.

This week we have a couple ways to read the news, a great game choice and a few tools. Stick around after the break and see how we did.

read more

    

Google Reader shuts down July 1, be sure to export your feeds

Posted: 29 Jun 2013 10:57 AM PDT

Google Reader

Whether you've found a replacement service or not, be sure to get your feeds from Google before the shutdown

Monday will be a sad day indeed, as Google Reader will finally shut its doors and stop operating as an RSS feed aggregator. We've covered some alternative (and free!) choices over the past week, but whether you've made up your mind on where your RSS feeds will live post-Google Reader or not, you need to remember to export your feeds before the service shuts down. We can assume Google might hold onto that data for a little while after the shutdown, but there aren't any promises being made.

As we cover in our tutorial on moving over to Feedly, Google Takeout makes it dead simple to get a single file containing all of your Google Reader data. Takeout will provide several different files as part of your Reader export, but the important one will be an XML file called "Subscriptions". You will be able to use this file to import your entire list of feeds to another service later on down the road, and also keep it as a "last good copy" of everything you had. You can even edit it before importing to another service.

You can find that tutorial, along with a few other important posts about choosing a compatible and useful RSS client for both the web and on your Android device, below.

    

Google brings Microsoft Office document editing to Chrome OS developer track

Posted: 29 Jun 2013 12:41 AM PDT

QuickOffice

If you look back about a year ago, you'll be reminded that Google purchased the mobile office suite Quickoffice. We finally see the fruits of the purchase, but not exactly how everyone expected to see it. Using the Microsoft Office compatibility built into Quickoffice's document editing, users on the Chrome OS developer build track can now edit both Word and Excel files without any hassles, right from their Chromebook.

Of course, being in the developer track means there is bound to be bugs. But Google has been fairly swift with pushing features through the dev and beta tracks, and we're seeing new features and additions roll into the stable branch with every release. Still, things may not be ready for prime time just yet.

To give this a try for yourself, you need to switch to the developer track of Chrome OS, and set an experimental flag. Point your browser at chrome://flags, and find the "Enable document editing" entry. Enable it and restart your Chromebook. There's a place to report any and all Quickoffice bugs right here, so be sure to report any difficulties you run into. Here's to a happy test phase, and we're looking forward to seeing Microsoft Office file editing in the stable branch soon.

Source: +François Beaufort

    

Win an Android tablet ... from CrackBerry.com?

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 07:50 PM PDT

Our pals at CrackBerry.com have had a tough day. Their beloved PlayBook tablet — you know, the only BlackBerry Tablet in existence — won't be upgraded to BB10. Not exactly a shock, especially to those of us who are used to seeing 2-year-old devices be put out to pasture with even less fanfare. At least these guys got a warning.

Anyhoo. CB's giving away a tablet — anything other than a PlayBook, we s'pose — with a contest running through the end of July 1. Seeing as how so many of you fine Android Central readers jumped ship way back when (and we know who you are), might as well lend a hand here.

Good luck!

    

Chrome beta updated, fixes keyboard at Gmail website and favicon sync

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 07:23 PM PDT

Chrome beta

Chrome beta for Android has received another sizable update, and a few long-standing nags have been addressed. A quick look at the change log says the white flash that appears when you load a new tab (that's murder on the eyes at night in bed) should be gone, favicons should sync across other devices using Clank (Chrome beta for Android's code name), and issues with the keyboard at the Gmail website where it won't dismiss have been corrected. 

Add in a security fix to make sure a dialog is displayed as soon as any downloads are called instead of actually accepted and a slew of the normal bug fixes, and this is one you'll want to install. Grab the update through Google Play or at the link above.

Source: Google

    

Max Sound's Spins HD makes Android mp3 playback not suck

Posted: 28 Jun 2013 05:15 PM PDT

Spins HD

Coming update makes it easier to organize and play your library while keeping all the sound improvements you expect from Spins HD

While the debate over keeping your music collection stored locally or in the cloud will never end, the one thing most people agree on is that a good music player app makes a world of difference in the way those files sound. Everyone has a favorite, but Max Sound is pushing out an update to Spins HD that you're going to want to look at.

Spins HD takes your existing on-device music collection and runs it through more than equalizer presets, the app delivers HD sound by converting the file into an actual analog sound wave. While it's still a compressed digital file, this allows the "full breadth" of the original recording to come through, delivering better sounding music. These claims may come from the developers, but I will say the files do sound better when playing in Spins HD, and often times much better. And it's easy -- there is a page of presets that work well, and for the more adventurous, you can also set the tone for high, low, and midpoint sounds from your music. Great sound from an app that's easy to use is always a plus.

Smart phones have taken the place of the mp3 player for most of us, so getting great sounding audio is important for the connoisseurs out there. The coming update for Spins HD keeps the great sound you expect from the player, and adds a much improved UI that makes it easier to manage and sort your playlists and songs. If you're a current user, look for the update shortly, and if you haven't tried Spins HD yet, click the link above to give it a whirl. A press release and series of screenshots is after the break.

read more

    
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