Category: Google

Google has quietly updated the supported services page for Google Home, adding iHeartRadio as a supported music streaming service.  Once it goes live, likely in the next few days, you will be able to request specific songs and artists to be played from the service.  Adding it will be similar to other services like Pandora and Google Play Music.  It will be under the Music section in the Google Home app where you will use your iHeartRadio account to sign in and link it to your Home.

The addition of this new service is another step in the continued growth of Google Home.  Dozens of informational services have been added since the smart speaker-meets-Google Assistant was released back in November.

With Google Assistant expanding to Android Marshmallow and Nougat devices, it only makes sense that Google Home start expanding too.  News has come from Google that starting next quarter (March-May) the smart speaker with Google Assistant embedded is going to make its way to the United Kingdom.  The news came from the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones who reported on a conversation he had with Google’s Rick Osterloh who indicated Home was on its way to the UK.

Google’s Rick Osterloh tells BBC that Google Home is coming to UK in Q2, claims its AI skills and vast data will help it beat Amazon Echo pic.twitter.com/qs3oZabak0

— Rory Cellan-Jones (@BBCRoryCJ) February 28, 2017

This will certainly be good news for readers in the UK.  Home, to this point, has been exclusively US-based but that hasn’t stopped some from buying them and having them shipped to the UK even though it isn’t support.  That, of course, has created some problems in that some of the services won’t work.

Google has quietly added a new 2TB storage tier to Google Drive.  The new storage level is $19.99 per month and fills the wide gap that was between the 1TB and the 10TB offering Drive offer previously.  The new tier can be added to your account via the Drive Android app or on the website.  If you already pay for Google Drive storage, you can upgrade your account via the app or web and you will be partially charged for the remaining time on your billing cycle.  The access to the extra storage however goes into immediate effect.  The new tier is available now and you should see it on both the app and the site to sign up.

The addition of the new tier will certainly help those users who need more than 1TB but not the massive – and expensive – 10TB option.  Price wise, the 2TB plan is competitive with other cloud storage solutions and, of course, since Drive ties in nicely with other Google apps, it is convenient.

Remember that if you store Google G Suite files (Docs, Sheets and Slides) and uses High Quality on your Google Photos uploads, those don’t count against your storage quota.  Things like Gmail attachments, PDFs and Microsoft files do count against it.

Last Summer, Google started allowing users who have 2-factor authentication enabled to get notified and approve account access via a pop-up on their phone.  The feature is deadly handy as it saves a lot of time over having to go over the Google Authenticator app and type in a six digit timed code.  To this point, that pop-up provided basically a yes or no option but didn’t really give you any details other than someone was trying to sign into your account.  That’s changing for the better as Google rolls out an update behind the scenes to improve the details you get when an authorization request is made.

First, if you don’t have 2-factor authentication enabled on your Google account, you can do that by going to myaccount.google.com.  Navigate to Sign in Options and enable it.  After that, you can add your phone to your account as being a device from which you can give authorizations in addition to the Google Authenticator app.  Once you have it enabled, when you try to sign in from another device with your Google account, you will get a prompt on your phone to approve it.

Big changes are coming in the latest update to Google Sheets for Android, web and iOS.  There are some nice formatting options that are coming to the app but probably the bigger news is that the Android app will have mouse support for the new breed of Chromebooks that run Android apps.

From a formatting perspective, Sheets will now have the ability to rotate text (this is found under Format>Text rotation) to make your spreadsheet cleaner and more visually appealing.  For example, you could rotate column headers 90-degrees so that they are vertical instead of wide across the column top.  This means you can make those columns more narrow.  Add to that, finally, the ability to format numbers in Accounting style.  This is one of those “why wasn’t it there before?” features but hey, it’s here now.  Under Format>Number>Accounting, you can change your numbers into this format for easier and more consistent reports on budgets and other financial spreadsheets.

Rounding out the formatting updates are new border styles.  There are several new border styles in the app that have various thicknesses and double borders.  These are all found under Toolbar>Borders>Border styles.

The big changes though and probably the more exciting ones for most are the changes to the Android (and iOS app) app for Sheets.

A small dot release of Google Play Music is hitting the Play Store that brings back a menu option and other small improvements.  The updated build is version 7.4 for those keeping score and with it you will find that the Recents option has returned to the main menu or navigation drawer of the app.  This feature disappeared late last year when Google started injecting machine learning into the app so it could better learn your listening preferences.  Since then, your Recents appeared as a button on the main display of the app (but it only shows your downloaded music if you are in offline mode)

The return of Recent to the menu should clean things up a bit whether you are online or offline and make it easier to find the music you have recently listened to in chronological order.