After 10 months of being invite driven, Google announced this morning that they are killing the Project Fi invite system across the US effectively immediately. To this point, in order to join and use the MVNO service from Google, you had to ask for an invite (ask for a SIM basically) to join up and use it. That system is gone and anyone with a compatible phone can now simply go to the Fi website and join up, getting a SIM shipped to them in a few days.
Google has begun rolling out a significant update to Google Play Services for Android that has a significant number of fixes and improvements for users. The updated build is version 8.7.03 for those keeping score at home and should be hitting your compatible device in the next few days. So what exactly is Google Play Services? Think of it as the glue that binds your phone to Google Play so you can authenticate and update apps and services on your phone. It’s not sexy but it is important and when it doesn’t play nice in the sandbox, it can make things a bit challenging.
In his second How To and troubleshooting video in as many weeks, Google Photos Top Contributor Scott Peachey has put together a great video outlining the various steps you can take when you can’t find photos in Google Photos. The 8:30 video covers a wide range of things to investigate and research on your device if you can’t find some photos or if you can’t find any photos. Even if you have not had the issue yourself, it is well worth watching this video so you can avoid some of the pitfalls that Scott and other contributors, me included, see often in the forums.
For those of you who don’t live in the US, you may have heard we are in an election year. For those of you who live in the US, it has been one of the most hotly contested pre-election cycles in quite some time. For those of you who use the Google Now launcher, primary and caucus results have been readily available for the past few weeks as these events leading up to the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and the Presidential election in November. Part of that process to get the nomination of either party is to secure enough delegates from the states (thanks to your results in the primaries or caucus’ in those states) to get the nomination. With “Super Tuesday” now complete and the delegates picture more clear, Google Now is starting to show the delegates standings.
Google has begun a limited roll out of their new apps and service, Hands Free. The testing area is limited to a select number of retailers and for those who live or work in the South Bay area, just south of San Francisco, California. Generally it covers Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Palo Alto. The idea, as the name suggests, is that you can complete a purchase completely hands free – no phone or smartwatch in your hand or on your wrist required. The app utilizes Bluetooth to communicate between the point-of-sale terminal and your phone in your pocket.
For you Android users of Google Photos, there is a new update rolling out to the Google Play Store that brings a lot of nice UI tweaks. The update you are looking for is version 1.15 for those keeping score at home and it should be coming to you via an OTA update (if you have it installed) over the course of the next day or two. Once you get the update, you are going to see some of the changes immediately. First, on the Assistant page, you will see a new Create New scroll bar at the top. This puts things like creating an Album, Collage, Animation or Movie a tap away. In previous builds these were off of the menu and a few taps away.
One of the challenges of working with spreadsheets is if you want to import text into that spreadsheet from another document. Often times it is imported with no problem but getting it organized into columns can be a painful experience. The Google Docs team is trying to make that process a bit easier with an update they have introduced to Google Sheets online. Now when you import text, you can highlight the columns you want to separate the text to in your spreadsheet thanks to a new “split text to columns” option.
In an effort to curb malicious software and inappropriate adverts, Google emailed developers yesterday outlining several new policy changes and revamped Developer Policy Center. The update informs developers that they have 30 days to make sure their apps or compliant or risk a warning or their app being removed from the Google Play Store outright. Basically it means by April 1st, developers need to make sure their apps are in line with the new rules.