Category: Google

One of the biggest challenges facing Android as a platform but mobile devices in general is security.  For their part, Google has been working hard to get security updates out to devices on a monthly basis.  The problem, however, is not Nexus devices.  It is the countless other manufactures and carriers out there who are painfully slow or simply refuse to update devices with the latest security updates in a timely manner.  It leaves consumers vulnerable unnecessarily.  It would seem that Google has had enough and may be about to use a tactic to get manufactures and carriers to update devices.

Public shaming.

Today, Google Street View has released a curated walk through the Ferrari museum in Maranello, Italy.  The collection of views allows you to walk through the famous road car and Formula One team’s museums and see many parts of the Ferrari campus as well.  For any fan of the Scuderia, this is a great edition and even if you are not a big F1 or Ferrari fan, this walk through is pretty sweet.  To find them, just search for Ferrari in the app and you’ll be taken to the new collection.

One of the tidbits of news that came out of the Google I/O keynote yesterday was around Google Photos.  The app and service were launched last year at I/O and the growth has been nothing short of impressive.  In his keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the service is now seeing an impressive 200 million active users per month.  Perhaps even more impressive, users of the service had created 2 trillion labels.  Those labels help users find things faster in their photos.

As expected, Google announced yesterday at I/O that the 3rd Developer Preview of Android N is now available for those registered in the beta program.  What is more interesting is that the company was quite clear that they believe this build is stable enough for general consumption on your every day devices.  It is a significant difference from the language used in the first two previews which was very clear in their “developer only” messaging.  While I would still caution those who don’t want to put up with odd behaviors or diminished battery life from download it, if you have an eligible device, you can get it through the Android Beta program site.

I don’t post a lot of news around Google’s webmaster tools because, frankly, it will appeal to a small percentage of you who come to the site.  However, this one was important and those of you who have sites big and small will want to make a note of this new feature.  Google has launched a revamped mobile testing tool for webmasters that not only points out if your site is mobile friendly but will highlight specific areas where you need to improve your site.  It also gives you a link to your site’s usability report with more details on what can be improved.

So why is this important?  Mobile traffic to websites continues to grow and that is certainly true for tech oriented sites.  Looking at the traffic here at ClintonFitch.com, well over 1/2 of you come to the site via a mobile device or the ClintonFitch.com app.  This site is not unique and why much of my design efforts over the course of the past six months have been focused on making sure that readers can visit the site on their mobiles without issues.

Google Calendar for web has received a small but important update that users will certainly benefit from having available.  Now when you view your calendar in day or week view, you will see not only the name of the meeting but the location of that meeting.  Now this may seem like a “no big deal” update but for those who rely heavily on Google Calendar will find it to be a huge benefit as you no longer necessarily have to open up the event to see where it is being held.