Google Play

Music fans that have used Shazam to identify a song they hear and like will now have improved ways to buy the song or perform other tasks via Google Music. The latest versions of the app still allows you to identify a song and once the identification is complete, a large Google Play Music bar will be visible that has buttons to listen to the song, buy the song, or create a radio station based on the song. Google Music really wants Shazam users to try out its music service and is offering a 3-month play subscription for a dollar.

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T-Mobile's "Binge On" service allows more video apps to stream media to devices without using up the customer's data allotment. While for the end customer this may seem like a really great deal, (who doesn't like so-called free data?), it continues to hold the door open for internet services to charge different amounts of money for different internet services. True Net Neutrality requires that all internet be treated the same - here that's just not true.

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The Google Play Developer Policy Center has been updated to provide better transparency to developers, Google has announced. Google says its redesigned Policy Center better provides developers with clear and transparent policy details, doing so with thematic organization, expanded details on policy enforcement, more detailed guidelines, and more. With it all comes a Material Design level of polish.

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Google has just announced an overhaul of its gaming service on Android, Google Play Games. In an update the Play Games app, users are no longer required to use a Google+ account to sign in, or as their identity. Instead, they can now create a Gamer ID, which consists of unique name and avatar, similar to how the Xbox Live and PlayStation's PSN online networks function.

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It can be a bit creepy just how much data about you is in your smartphone. You phone knows what you like as far as music, video, and websites. It knows whom you talk to the most and where you are going for the day. Google has figured out a new way to harness all this knowledge and use it to recommend apps that might make your day of traveling a bit more tolerable.

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We are all familiar with Uber and the ride sharing service that the company offers. Essentially, with that service you use an app to hail a car to take you wherever you need to go. Uber has been trialing a new service called UberEats in a few cities around the country and has announced that the food delivery service is ready to kick off in ten major cities in the US.

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One thing that has been missing since Google Play launched was a way for developers to let people try their game at no cost, assuming it’s a paid game. There have been no promo codes to be handed out and the only thing to do would be send out Google Play cards to folks that devs want to give a free game to.

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This morning we've been introduced to a lovely new Android-based live wallpaper by the name of Pixelscapes Wallpaper. This app is extremely simple, works with most modern smartphones, and was just updated less than a week ago. This live wallpaper is cute, universally pleasing to the eye, and comes with no in-app advertisements of any kind. Best of all, it contains three times, one for each segment of your day!

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Just as was rumored earlier this week, one of the world's greatest music acts, The Beatles, will officially join the streaming music era on Christmas Eve. It was just officially announced that Spotify, Apple Music, and seven other streaming services will offer The Beatles' 13 studio albums plus four collections starting at 12:01 AM on December 24th in each timezone.

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Just because it isn't its native platform doesn't mean Google is giving iOS users the short end of the figurative stick when it comes to accessing content. Unlike some other retailer who seemingly wants to kick out rival devices from its shelves. Google has just pushed an update to its Google Play Movies & TV app for iOS, not Android, that adds some interesting and useful, not to mention timely, features, like direct support for Apple TV as well as streaming over cellular data connections.

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Android users will be first in seeing a brand new "buffering" text in their YouTube apps when a video is loading. This is unlike the past in which a spinning "wheel of death" was seen or - worse still - the video would just pause without any indication that it was about to start up again. Today, Google provides some much-needed notification of what's happening. Almost like they're opening the doors to you, the user, allowing you to see what's actually going on in the app, in your internet, as your video loads.

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While all the web apps and services from Google are designed to run in the browser, sometimes its just easier to have some things running as a separate app, making for one less browser tab to sift through. That's how one developer must have felt when it comes to Google Play Music, as Windows users can now download a desktop app for the streaming service. The software is open source, so this is in no way an official app, and can be downloaded for free from GitHub.

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