Author: Clinton

YouTube TV has added a seventh premium add-on option to their lineup, AMC Premier.   The more immersive version of AMC can be added to your YouTube TV account for an additional $5 per month.  It joins the likes of Stars, Showtime, and Sundance Network in the premium services lineup of Google’s streaming television service.

AMC Premier is a more user controlled and immersive experience over AMC, which is part of the standard YouTube TV package.  With Premier, users can get ad-free watching, additional show content and other membership benefits.  AMC is the home of shows like The Walking Dead, Fear The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, and Preacher to name but a few.

Google Drive is expected to hit a critical milestone this week:  1 Billion active users.  The news came from Google Vice President of Cloud, Diane Green during her keynote at Google Cloud Next in San Francisco.  When Drive does pass the one billion mark, it will make it the 8th Google service or app that has reached the milestone.

Currently the “Billion User Club” consists of the following from Google:

• Google Search
• Google Maps
• Google Play Store
• Android
• Chrome
• Gmail
• YouTube

It is an important milestone for Google Drive but in a broader context, it is critically important for Google.

After having their flagship phone on sale for Amazon Prime Day last week, Huawei has lowered the price of the Huawei Mate 10 Pro once again.  While it isn’t as good as the Prime Day deal, it is a hefty savings for those considering it.  Normally the 6″ phablet is $799 now through June 30th you can pick one up on Amazon for just $549.  And this isn’t a stripped down version either.  It has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of built-in storage.  The $549 price represents the lowest price by far that has been available on the Mate 10 Pro here in the US.

I reviewed the Huawei Mate 10 Pro earlier this year and as I put in that review, it is one of the best phones out there right now.  Huawei has done a fantastic job with the overall design of the phone and the Android Oreo built EMUI 8 user experience is excellent.

Like its desktop brethren, the Chrome for Android app has now officially been updated to Chrome 68.  The promotion comes after five beta builds of the Chrome for Android Beta app over the course of the past month or so.  The new build is 68.0.3440.70 for those keeping score at home.  Google has released it but it will take several days before everyone gets it – perhaps up to a week in some cases.

Like the desktop version of the browser, Chrome for Android has a load of bug fixes and other improvements.  It also brings the “Not Secure” banner to sites you visit that are not encrypted (HTTPS) as it does on the desktop.  This is a change that Google announced was coming last February to help identify non-encrypted sites.

A new Chrome OS Commit is pointing to the new Google Sans coming to Chrome OS in the near future.  The new font is one that Google has been rolling out to a wide range of their apps and sites over the course of the past few months and is seemingly tied closely to the whole Material Design makeover that the company has been doing at the same time.

The font isn’t a far cry from the standard Google font but is a thinner version and frankly, fits Material Design exceptionally well.

Google in the process of doing a lot of revamp work on their apps and extensions.  The Mountain View company has already moved a lot of their sites to a Material Design look and that process is set to continue over the course of the rest of this year.  That also includes Chrome itself and that means that some extensions are going to be retired.

For a long time the company has had a Chrome Bookmark Manager plug in that brought a Material Design look and feel to the bookmarks manager in Chrome.  Now that this look has moved into the built-in manager, there really isn’t a reason to have it anymore.  Google, it seems, feels the same way.