Android

In honor of the Memorial Day Weekend, if you're in the United States you will receive FREE SHIPPING on your ShopAndroid.com order. This special offer is valid all weekend long until Monday night (midnight PT). We have tons of cases, batteries, chargers, Bluetooth accessories and more for popular Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, so be sure to browse around and take advantage of the savings on shipping. Take me to ShopAndroid.com!

Time for new apps to check out in the App Weekender! These are some of the gems that came through our queue this week so we haven’t reviewed them yet but they look enticing enough to download… let us know what you think of the new apps in the comments. There’s easy one click links below... View ArticleApp Weekender: 25+ new apps you should try this weekend is a post from: AndroidTapp.com Check Out More Related: 8 Best Android Apps to Ditch Cable TV for Cord Cutters 6 Best Video Calling Android Apps 5 Best Cloud Storage Android Apps

Google to stop accepting payments for Argentine developers from June 27, apps to be pulled from July 27. Android developers based in Argentine have received notice from Google that it'll no longer be able to accept payments for them from June 27. A letter from Google to devs, obtained by South American phone site Celularis, indicates that the changes apply to both paid apps and in-app purchases. The Verge points out that the change is likely due to tough new restrictions on currency exchanges recently imposed by the Argentine government. But Celularis notes that despite the changes to Google Play, Google AdSense for mobile continues to operate in the country. The letter from Google states that it'll stop accepting payments on behalf of Argentine developers from June 27. Paid apps and in-app items from these devs will be pulled a month later, starting July 27, following final payments on July 22. One solution for Argentina-based app developers is to move their account to another country where they're able to legally do business, an option Google itself suggests in its email to developers. Google states that it hopes to restore payouts to developers based in Argentina in the future, but that "no specific plans are in place at the moment." Source: Celularis; via: The Verge

Customers' data counters reset for holiday weekend Good news for EE customers in the UK this weekend -- the operator has announced that by way of apology for network issues earlier this week, all customers will have their data counters reset to zero. That means however much of your monthly data allowance you'd used, it'll reset to zero this weekend, allowing you to use an extra portion of data before your monthly billing date. We've confirmed that our own account's meter was reset to zero as of this morning, and it looks like the changes apply to data-only contracts as well as regular phone customers. In fact, the reset seems to apply to all EE customers, regardless of whether you were affected by the recent outage. To make up for the problem with our network earlier in the week, we're resetting your #4GEE data counters to zero. Happy Bank Holiday! — EE (@EE) May 24, 2013

  You know what photos we’re searching for, right? (Image credit: Photographer / Shutterstock) Search is increasingly becoming human. While users from my generation have been used to search operators like “and”, “or” and the plus and minus signs, search queries are becoming more and more natural language like. Take for instance Facebook’s Open Graph search, which launched earlier this year with mixed reception. You can use natural language like “photos of my friends taken in Tokyo,” for instance. Google has announced a better way to find photos, which uses natural language, as well as photo recognition. This new feature lets you search for photos within your Google+ network using simple queries. To make search even better, Google is now employing “computer vision and machine learning,” which will recognize even generic images based on their characteristics. With this update, you can simply do a search for “my photos of flowers” and Google will come up with images of flowers from your Google+ photos. You can then add qualifiers to focus your search: “my photos of flowers in New York,” for instance. This has a few implications, of course. First, Google is moving toward doing away with tags and captions. With the new update, Google’s algorithms (neural networks?) will attempt to identify the image based on image recognition. Product manager Matthew Kulick says this is limited to English searches within Google.com (no support for other country domains, yet), and when you are logged in via Google+. Going beyond photo search, of course, the bigger implication that comes to mind is that this improvement will tie in well with Google Glass. With Google improving its image recognition technology and having an improved ability in recognizing faces and objects, tying this in with persistent photo and video captured through wearable computers will become a rich source of data and analytics for the search giant.

Welcome to the latest entry in our Bonus Round series, wherein we tell you all about the new Android games of the day that we couldn't get to during our regular news rounds. Consider this a quick update for the dedicated gamers who can't wait for our bi-weekly roundups, and don't want to wade through a whole day's worth of news just to get their pixelated fix. Today we've got n adorable brawler, a licensed adventure book (what?), a new arcade racing game, and old arcade racing game, and Square's latest casual title. Without further ado:  Sci-Fighters Sci-Fighters is a ported browser game, a simple multiplayer brawler vein that takes its cutesy science fiction inspiration from Flash Gordon and the like. Done With This Post? You Might Also Like These:[New Game] Gameloft Releases GT Racing: Academy Free+ To The Market, In-App Purchases Not Included [New Game] CSR Racing Revs Its Engine On Android As A Free Download [New Game] Mini Motor Racing Has Little Cars And Big Races In One Massive Download [Update: Gameplay Trailer Added] Race Of Champions For Android Screenshots Make Us Drool, Want To Go Go-Karting [Bonus Round] Sci-Fighters, Judge Dredd: Countdown Sec 106, Race Illegal, Mensa Academy, And RE-VOLT Free was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Help save that valuable mobile data with just a few taps in Chrome Beta One of the lesser talked-about features rolled out at Google I/O last week was a new option for Chrome on mobile devices to cut down on the bandwidth used while browsing. Well the feature has been rolled out in an experimental capacity as part of the latest Chrome Beta update on Android, and it's a quick way to help save on data usage while browsing. Like most systems that work to preserve data while browsing, Google routes your browsing traffic through one of its own proxy servers, compressing it along the way as data is sent back and forth to your phone. Correctly, Google has chosen to only route HTTP connections through the proxy, and HTTPS request will always be sent directly. Google claims data savings can be as much as 50-percent, which is nothing to sneeze at. To enable this new feature, you'll have to be running the latest Chrome Beta update (version 28, technically) on your phone or tablet. You will likely be greeted by a splash page the first time you open Chrome Beta after the update, but if you're not, head to the browser settings, scroll down to "Bandwidth management" and then tap "Reduce data usage" and hit the button at the top right to enable it. (If you don't see the option, try heading to "chrome://flags" in the navigation bar and enabling it manually.) You'll be able to come back after you do some browsing and see how much data you saved by enabling this new feature.

One of the more interesting alternative launchers out there (that is to say, one that isn't just a grid of apps and widgets plus a drawer) is Action Launcher. This premium custom launcher has been gaining fans since its launch, thanks to a unique gesture-based app drawer and a focus on speed and usability. With version 1.7, developer Chris Lacy has added some of the features this younger launcher lacks, most notably icon theme support - the various theme packs for GO, Nova, and Apex launchers should work with Action Launcher Pro now. A stock Jelly Bean icon pack is included. Done With This Post? You Might Also Like These:Nova Launcher Updates With Jelly Bean 4.2 Compatibility, Quick Settings, And Other Goodies Nova Launcher Updated To Version 2.1: New Apps Menu, Better Icon And Wallpaper Selection, And More Theme Options [New App] Mobint Joins The 4.0+ Launcher Party With Jelly Bean-Inspired Holo Launcher HD Create A Killer Retro LCD Android Theme With A Few Quick Downloads Action Launcher Updated To Version 1.7: Icon Pack Support, Wallpaper Scrolling Toggle, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Memorial Day weekend! This week was a busy one, so it will be nice to have that extra day to relax and catch up on rest from all of the traveling we have been doing lately. This week was highlighted by Android 4.3 tidbits, Verizon’s comical press event at CTIA, and talks of a “Google [...] This Week in the Life of DROID: 5/24/2013 is a post from: Droid Life Click the post title to continue through and join the conversation!

Sometimes, updates break things. That seems to be the case for some HTC owners who, upon receiving a silent update to the newest version of Google Play Services, are having trouble using apps that rely on location data. According to HTC phone users in this support thread, Google Now continually asks to turn Location Services on, location-dependent applications like Foursquare and WeatherBug don't function properly, and Maps is unable to lock onto a location. The good news? Google's looking into the problem. The bad news? No ETA. And unfortunately, because Google Play Services updates in the background automatically, wiping data won't help. Done With This Post? You Might Also Like These:Silently Installing Itself On A Device Near You: The Green 'Google Settings' Icon - It's Just Google Play Services 3.0 [I/O 2013] New APIs For Location, Single Sign-On, And Google Cloud Messaging Google Play Services Can Now Be Installed Manually From The Play Store Latest Google Maps Update (v6.10) Causes The HTC Rezound To Reboot, Leaves Users Finding Their Own Way Home Google Services Bug Causing Location Issues For HTC Owners, Google Working On A Fix was written by the awesome team at Android Police.