Google Play Music for Android can Now Stream Directly to Sonos

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For those of you Sonos speakers, you’re going to love this. Google announced this morning that Android users can now stream Google Play music directly to their Sonos speaker through the app. That’s a pretty big deal, considering how popular Sonos speakers are right now. Instead of using the Sonos app, you can just use the Google Play Music app on your phone, which is probably a lot better than the Sonos app.

“In Google Play Music, we’ve found a great partner to bring this vision to life for the first time on a global scale. Together, we’ve created a music experience that shows how media, devices, and sound can seamlessly work together in the home.”

All you need to do is tap on the Chromecast icon in the corner, and then choose your Sonos speaker, instead of Chromecast obviously. It’s just that simple. If you’re like me, and you live in Google Play Music, than this is a great thing to have, especially with All Access available for streaming to Sonos too. For those that don’t know, Sonos speakers are kind of like Chromecast, except they are speakers and not a TV. Nonetheless they are still some pretty amazing speakers.

With Google Play Music, you’ve got over 22 million songs at your fingertips, especially if you have All Access for $9.99/month. You’ve also got your personalized playlists and radio stations like the “I’m Feeling Lucky Radio”. It’s definitely a great experience with Sonos there. You can also upload your own music for free to Google Play. Google gives you storage for 20,000 songs. So if you have a song that Google Music doesn’t have, you can simply upload it. It’s just that easy.

How many of you own a Sonos speaker system in your house? How do you like it? Let us know in the comments below.

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LG to Put ‘Odin’ Into Mass Production “Soon”

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With technology giants like Samsung and Apple designing – and in Samsung’s case producing – their own mobile processors LG didn’t want to be left out and so for years rumors of an LG-designed System-on-Chip have been swirling. Odin is the name for the LG’s designed mobile processor that’s now said to be entering mass production later this year. Rumors surrounding Odin have been around for years now and at one point the general consensus was that LG was looking to utilize the big.LITTLE that ARM designed some time ago. Apparently, the idea was that LG would be pairing four Cortex-A15 chips together with four Cortex-A7 chips to deliver good performance as well as decent battery life. Since then however, a lot has changed in the ARM processor world, so with with Odin apparently rolling off the production line soon, just what will LG do with it?

Unsurprisingly, we shouldn’t expect Odin to be the beating heart of LG’s upcoming G3, not only does the Korean giant have a good partnership with chip maker Qualcomm, but an unknown processor at the heart of a flagship device wouldn’t do well in marketing terms. More likely is the idea that LG is going to be using Odin in their lower-end devices in order to deliver quality performance at a decent price. We imagine then, that LG would probably be using something like the newer Cortex-A53 design, which is not only 64-bit, but essentially a more efficient Cortex-A7 design. According to Korean media, TSMC (Taiwan Semi Conductor) is – unsurprisingly – said to be producing the chip for LG using a 28nm process.

The lower-end budget market is an important one for LG, especially in parts of Europe. You might be wondering why LG needs to go their own route with processors, considering MediaTek produces a CPU for pretty much every price point. MediaTek doesn’t have a good track record (or one at all, really) for supporting their chipsets, so being able to produce their own chips would allow them more control on the software side of things as well as being able to better support them in the future.

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Head of Google Payments Says Wallet Will be Here “For a Long While” Yet

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Google Wallet was introduced almost three years ago, and it’s been an uphill battle since then. From carrier and phone limitations to competition, the payment system has seen a lot of resistance. They’re not giving up, though. At the 2014 Electronic Transaction Association tradeshow in Las Vegas, Ariel Bardin, head of Google Payments, said they’ll “continue doing [it] for a long while.” He also spoke about the changes of Google Wallet and how Google is taking a different approach than their competitors.

When Google Wallet got its start, it was supposed to be the dawn of a new era. It was a great opportunity if you had a phone with NFC (a short range wireless chip that allows the transmission of information), a carrier that would support Wallet, and the right credit card. Most people didn’t fall into that group, though. On top of all that, merchants were hesitant in spending money to upgrade their systems to work with NFC and Google Wallet. It was a slow start to say the least. Google trekked on, though. They adapted to the world around them.

They added support for more credit cards and saw a boost in usage. Although a good move, it wasn’t enough. There were questions about the security of Google Wallet transactions through NFC. Google altered their approach. “…we asked ourselves if we could emulate the secure element in software, and make it a core service in Android,” Bardin explained. So that’s what they did. Using a cloud based technology called HEC (host card emulation) to store sensitive information along with the tap and pay ability of NFC, Google Wallet was revamped. The system is now built in to the Android software (4.4) and open to developers.

So what does this all mean when it comes to the big picture? Expansion. Google Wallet isn’t limited to phones anymore. Data is stored in the cloud, so it can be accessed anywhere. You can add credit cards from other locations. Online merchants can accept Google Wallet payments. Google services can access this information so you don’t have to constantly reenter credit card information. It’s a very integrated system. The question is how is it going to fair?

Nothing is ever easy in the tech industry. When a service comes along (especially when the market forecast is $720 billion in transactions by 2017), someone else is always trying to get a seat at the table. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile immediately invested in Isis, a mobile payment system with an eye to compete with Google Wallet. Square allows mobile platforms to make credit card transactions. Paypal and Amazon both have potential to become competitors. Even Apple has been rumored to introduce a payment platform since its implementation of Touch ID.

Google isn’t just interested in revenue from transactions on Google Wallet, though. “We are in the business to create a great user experience. That’s a little different from others in this industry. Making money will come later,” said Bardin. The use of Google Wallet will expand the uses of other Google services. Money will eventually be made from Google Wallet, but the revenue from search and ads will come first.

So whether you like it or not, Google Wallet is here to stay. It’s part of Android now. It’s infiltrating not only the entire Google ecosystem but other parts of our interconnected world as well.

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Sony’s Lifelog App Now Available in the Play Store; Only for Xperia Devices

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Back at CES this year, Sony announced their new SmartBand wearable, a somewhat discreet wristband that would track your activities over the course of a day and log everything. As with any piece of wearable tech out there, the SmartBand needs a smartphone to work at all, and a specific app to relay all the information its collected from your day. That app is Lifelog, and Sony have been teasing it for quite some time now, along with the SmartBand itself. Now, Lifelog has been released to the Google Play Store, but curiously it’s only available for Xperia devices as of writing.

The Lifelog app is essential to get the most out of the SmartBand, it tracks everything you do throughout the day, how many calories you’ve burned for instance, how far you traveled, how you slept etc etc. It also works with other parts of your smartphone, using the GPS and camera side of things to tell you where you took a photo and at what time. It all comes together pretty nicely, and for those looking to get into the whole life logging thing, this is one of the better solutions out there. It will however, require you to purchase a SmartBand, which is currently unavailable until May 1st or so. So, despite the fact that you can download the app onto your Xperia device, it won’t be as useful as it could be until next month.

What’s really confusing here however, is the fact that the Lifelog app is only available for Xperia devices. Hopefully, this is fixed soon as the SmartBand that Sony is selling from the beginning of next month will be pretty much useless without it. The accessory itself is designed to work with any Android device running Android 4.3 and up, so why this app is only available for Xperia devices baffles me. Still, if you’re one of Sony’s chosen ones, then you can go ahead and give it a try at the source link below. For everyone else though, take a look at the trailer and see what’s in store for you (hopefully) next month when the SmartBand itself launches.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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UK/Europe Residents Beginning To See Kit Kat Updates To The LG G Pad 8.3

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Good news for UK and European residents that own and use the LG G Pad 8.3, the KitKat update is coming your way an it’s coming in hot. We think that most people who use this tablet agree that it’s a little behind the times when it comes to software versions, but at least now we have some confirmation that the update is beginning. So far we have only heard that the update is starting to roll out to those users who live in the UK and certain parts of Europe, but for those of you stateside who have the G Pad 8.3 you’ll have to wait a little longer. Before the update started to hit user devices, the G Pad was operating on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean so this is certainly a nice change. Users will get all the kit kat goodies like immersive mode and transparent status bar, along with more cloud print compatibility and other things.

You may have noticed the update notification pop up in your status bar but if you haven’t you can head to the usual location to where you check for this sort of thing. You can start by navigating into your tablets settings menu then scrolling all the way down to about device, then tap on the software updates section which should be at the very top, and inside there should be a button to check for updates. If all’s well it should notify you right then and there within a few seconds if there is an update for you to download and install. If not, don’t fret as it will be probably be coming very, very soon.

As always if you’re going to begin an update for your device make sure that you have plenty of battery life to sustain the download and install time, which shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes or so. Although the download file for the update shouldn’t be that large, make sure you also have the space. We know that it’s not likely you would run out but it is possible if you’ve been loading all kinds of stuff into your devices storage. Happy updating!

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Sprint To Get Harman/Kardon Audio Special Edition HTC One M8

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In what might surprise many people we have just learned that Sprint will be getting a special harman/kardon edition HTC One M8 in the future. After a couple years of having devices powered by beats audio, it looks like HTC may be taking things a different direction in the audio department. For those who are unaware, harman/kardon specializes in all kinds of high end audio equipment from Home Entertainment systems, to speakers, to headphones and even in-car audio. We’re not exactly sure if this means that HTC is deciding to forego the Beats audio for a new new type of audio technology from harman/kardon with this specific model, or if it will accompany the tech that is already there. The information comes from infamous leaker evleaks, but the only details are that this model will be coming to Sprint. It’s worth noting that the image shown here is only a mockup as there are no actual images that have surfaced of the device yet.

There is no mention of price or availability time frames, but since the official launch of the HTC One M8 across all carriers is scheduled to happen here in the next few days, we can only assume that this special edition of the One M8 will be in the near future. We have to wonder if other carriers will end up getting this special edition model as well, and of course the question that is probably on everybody’s mind is how well will the audio sound compared to the original model? With the quality that harman/kardon is normally known for we can only imagine that it will be of superb quality, but we would only be speculating.

Is HTC testing the waters with harman/kardon here? Are they using this model of the One M8 to see how well the audio is received and place it into other future devices if it does well with consumers? Time will tell. We’re sure this isn’t the first and only set of details coming from evleaks as he’s known for putting out tidbits like this early on, only to follow it up with the juicy information later. Will it look different and have a new color? And why Sprint and not any other carrier? There are so many questions rolling through our minds about this but we have literally no answers to give. When we learn more, you’ll know more.

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Google Releases The Module Developers Kit For Ambitious Developers And OEMs

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Google just released the Module Developers Kit today so manufacturers can begin to compile all the information they need on how to produce modules for its upcoming Ara device. We know that Google is allegedly getting ready to show the world a working prototype of the Project Ara smartphone in the coming weeks, and there are rumors that Google wants to begin testing a $50 WiFi only version of the device in the near future in emerging markets where WiFi hot spots are common. From the sounds of things, Ara devices will be like the Frankenstien of the smartphone world as module pieces of your RAM, your processor, your screen, your camera etc. can all come different OEMs. We can’t promise we can resist the urge to scream out IT’S ALIVE once we get one of these in our own hands and power it on.

The point of releasing the Module Developers Kit now was to put it ahead of the the virtual conference that Google is holding later this month with the developers that are to be working on Ara modules. Glazing over things beforehand means that they can enter the conference already in the know about certain details that will ultimately come up at some point anyway. The Module Devlopers Kit has a good bit of information for interested manufacturers, with everything from the size of the bases for Ara devices to the specifications of the Power Storage modules. As Google has stated before, there will end up being three Ara base sizes available to consumers, so Ara devices will end up being available as small, medium, or large size phones.

Just like with Google’s requirements for Android design guidelines for apps and the UI, they have a set of design guidelines in place for modules as well, which means there will be a strict rule as to how modules will be able to look, how big they can be and so on. The good things for the developers is that these rules or guidelines will only end up applying to the most common modules like the camera, CPU etc. Less mainstream or otherwise less important or unique modules can be created with a little more freedom it sounds like. With the Module Developers Kit out there for any developers and OEMs to look through everything and get going, things are starting to take an interesting turn and we can’t wait to see what manufacturers, Google, and developers come up with for the future of Ara.

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