Google

Get directions to home and work with 3D Touch and Google Maps

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 1, 2016

As part of yesterday's update to Google's iPhone and iPad mapping application in the App Store which brought pit stops to navigation mode, the refreshed software has replicated one of my favorite 3D Touch features found on Apple Maps: the ability to get directions to home and work right from the Home screen.

In the new Google Maps 4.16 for iOS, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus owners can press the app's Home screen icon to bring up the shortcut menu with two useful Quick Actions: Directions to Work and Directions to Home.

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Google Maps for iOS now lets you add pit stops to your trips without leaving navigation mode

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 29, 2016

Internet giant Google on Monday announced that an upcoming update to its native, free of charge Maps application in the App Store has a brand new feature that will let you add pit stops onto your trips without leaving navigation mode. The feature was added to Google Maps for Android last October and starting today will begin rolling out on iOS in more than a hundred countries worldwide where Google Maps offer navigation.

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How to use Gmail without an @gmail address

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 25, 2022
Set up Gmailify on iPhone

Gmail is the most popular email service, offering excellent features like spam protection, automatic email sorting (Social, Updates, Promotions), advanced search, and more. Contrary to popular belief, you can use these features on your existing non-Gmail email service, thanks to a feature called Gmailify.

This tutorial shows you how to link your non-Gmail account with Gmail via Gmailify on iPhone and iPad.

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Gmail gains lock and question mark icons to indicate if emails are encrypted and authenticated

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 9, 2016

In honor of the Safer Internet Day, Google on Tuesday announced in a blog post that it has added a lock icon in Gmail's web interface to denote whether or not your emails are encrypted. Additionally, a question mark icon on a sender's avatar indicates messages that are not authenticated.

Gmail has supported encrypted connections between a user's machine and its servers for some time now, but this doesn't provide the full protection if a sender's email client or email service does not support encryption in transit using TLS.

The new lock icon makes it easier to see if a message you received from someone is encrypted or not, and whether or not it can be authenticated.

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Google updates Chrome for iOS with 70% fewer crashes, Spotlight integration and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 27, 2016

Google's mobile Chrome browser was updated this morning in the App Store and the new release promises a whopping 70 percent fewer crashes along with a few other goodies, such as Spotlight Search integration.

Google said that the dramatically reduced crash rate is due to Chrome's adoption of WKWebView, a rendering engine from Apple which was first introduced with the release of iOS 8 back in 2014.

In addition, this release of Chrome for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad should be faster overall, with JavaScript execution now “dramatically faster.”

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Confidential Google documents reveal that Android has generated $31 billion revenue in its lifetime

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated March 18, 2019

Since its inception in 2008, Android has generated revenue of $31 billion and $22 billion in profit, a lawyer for Oracle said in a federal court, marking the first time Android's financial performance was publicly revealed.

As a quick refresher, Oracle, the database maker, is suing Google's parent Alphabet over using its Java software without paying for it to develop Android. The figure is based on information Oracle derived from Google's confidential internal financial documents.

Google promptly asked a San Francisco federal judge to redact and seal portions of the public transcript of last week’s hearing because improperly disclosed data contains “extremely sensitive information” from documents that were marked “Attorney’s Eyes Only.”

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Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 to be the default search engine on iOS

Cody Lee ∙ January 21, 2016

Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014 to remain the default search engine on iOS, reports Bloomberg. The staggering number comes directly from a transcript of court proceedings in Oracle's ongoing copyright lawsuit against Google, which stated that the search giant has an agreement with Apple that gives it a percentage of search revenue generated through iPhones and iPads.

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The best ways to store your iPhone photos in the cloud

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 16, 2024
Save iPhone photos to best cloud storage options

Those high-quality snaps and videos you take on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad can pretty quickly eat up all of the available storage space on your device.

There are a number of techniques to increase your free storage, like deleting apps you no longer use, emptying system caches and so forth, but they all pale in comparison to the simplest of solutions—actually moving storage-hungry photos and videos off your device to safely store them in the cloud.

In this post, we'll tell you all you need to know about the most popular cloud storage solutions. We're going to detail backing up your media to each of them and discuss recommended strategies for freeing up as much storage space as possible without destroying your personal memories or changing your workflow much.

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Remix OS alpha is here: run Android on your Mac

Christian Zibreg ∙ January 12, 2016

Remix OS, a software platform created in partnership with the Android-x86 project, is now available for download from the Jide website. Remix is basically a custom engineered version of Android Lollipop that can be installed onto a USB thumb drive to boot your Mac right into Android.

This is a pre-release alpha version of Remix intended for developers so it may be a bit rough around the edges and exhibit some hiccups. That being said, Remix OS is pretty cool: it has a custom user interface with built-in Amazon App Store, but you can sideload Google Play services to run virtually any Android app on your Mac.

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