Todd R. Weiss

Google has unveiled its latest Google Play services application, giving app developers new features that they can include in their products, including in-app Street View imagery capabilities and the ability for apps to recognize the activities of users. Google Play services 4.4 was announced by the Android team in a May 7 post on the […]

Google Maps apps for Android and iOS are continuing to be tweaked and improved by Google, and the latest versions add new features such as better navigation and easier offline map access. The new capabilities, which also include business filters so users can find just the right nearby business that can provide the products or […]

Google’s expanding Chromebook computer series is again getting various new Intel-equipped models, this time with Celeron or Core i3 processors from a wide range of manufacturers including Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba. The latest new machines were announced by Bill Brougher, director of Google’s Chrome OS Partner Engineering, in a May 6 post on The […]

The Google Chrome team is experimenting with improved URLs that could provide better protection for users against phishing attacks that trick them into visiting malicious Websites. The early-stage tests involve an “origin-chip” feature that replaces long and often-hard-to-decipher URLs with short URLs made up only of a Website’s actual domain name, according to a May […]

Almost as quickly as it began early on May 6, Microsoft’s one-day special $199 sale on Asus X200-MA laptop computers appeared to end by mid-morning when the Microsoft Website revealed that the available units had sold out. For excited buyers who had learned about the one-day $199 sale in pre-event promotions and went online to […]

Google Wallet, which lets online shoppers make purchases without having to enter credit card numbers each time, could soon be available to Google Glass users, allowing them to make purchases with voice commands or gestures. The pending addition of Google Wallet services to Google Glass users was reported in a TechCrunch story on May 5, […]

Android KitKat 4.4, the latest version of Google’s Android mobile operating system, is gaining more use on more devices, according to the latest figures from Google. The latest Android Developer Dashboard Website, which regularly tallies the market-share figures for Android operating systems, announced that KitKat 4.4 is now on 8.5 percent of Android mobile devices […]

Google is now delivering online purchases directly to shoppers in two more U.S. metro areas as it expands its Google Shopping Express services to New York City and West Los Angeles. The service expansion in New York and Los Angeles was announced by Jenna Owens, the general manager of operations for Google Shopping Express, in […]

When a Google Glass device is broken down to its essence, the component parts reportedly total about $80, which is far less than the $1,500 list price for one of the early “Explorer” versions of the controversial eyewear-mounted computers. That’s the unofficial conclusion of a “teardown,” or disassembly of a Glass unit by the Website, […]

Google is being sued over its alleged policies that force smartphone makers to load lesser-desired Google apps on devices so that they can also pre-load popular Google apps such as YouTube on devices that run Android. The lawsuit, filed May 1 in federal court in San Jose, Calif., was brought by the owner of an […]

Helping computers better learn the context of words so that they can more accurately interpret what is being sought or said is the goal of a project being undertaken by Google’s research team. To help researchers find improved ways to help machines figure out the context of searches and inquiries, Google is contributing data sets […]

Google Apps has just released mobile versions of its Docs and Sheets applications so that mobile users can create or edit documents on their devices while on the move. A mobile Slides app is also in the pipeline, but is not yet ready for release. The three new mobile apps for Android and for iOS […]