Google Docs and Sheets now support image cropping & adjustment, Headers and Footers.

Google has updated its productivity apps for Android today, namely Docs and Sheets with some useful features. If you're a big user of these apps, you will welcome these features. Google announced the update in a blog post and the new features apply to both Docs and Sheets running on Android phones and tablets.

First in the list is the introduction of headers and footers. From now on, users will be able to insert and edit headers and footers. The steps to do this is quite straight forward. First, users must turn on "Print Layout" and tap the header or footer, then type the text they want. Adding page numbers is also supported. Follow the full set of instructions in this link to add header, footer and page numbers to your docs.

The biggest new feature in this update is the ability to resize, move and rotate images. In addition, users will be to change their text wrapping and border styles. Google has a very detailed tutorial on their site.

Finally, Docs will also let you drag and drop text in Docs.

Grab Google Docs and Sheets in Google Play Store.

Celebrate the Lunar New Year with Asphalt 8: Airborne.

The world will be celebrating the Lunar New year this weekend and Gameloft wants to mark this occasion to welcome the Year of the Rooster with the special Renault Alpine Celebration in the new R&D Event. This is part of an update published by Gameloft which contains some other surprises:

• New Location: Weave your way in and around the mighty mountains of Patagonia!
  
• New McLaren Race car: Get revved for a new event! Complete every tour and claim the unparalleled McLaren MP4/8 as your own!
  
• New Cars: Look out for each spectacular speedster's special event in the coming weeks!
  
• Lunar New Year R&D: Celebrate the Year of the Rooster with the special Renault Alpine Celebration in the new R&D Event!

Head over to Google Play Store to download Asphalt 8: Airborne.

Google Translate on Android gets instant camera English/Japanese translation.

Google Translate is capable of translating 103 languages by typing, translate 52 languages offline, instantly translate two-way speech in 32 languages and more. With technologies long taking down frontiers, we the people of planet earth often have to interact with different languages and cultures and Google Translate comes in handy and is able to do more during travels. 

In the latest update to the app, Google has added support for instant camera translation for English to/from Japanese. For that to work, simply download the Japanese language pack within the app, take a picture of the text you want to translate and Google Translate will show the translated text on top of the image. It is that simple.

The update is already rolling in Google Play Store.

Netflix for Android now lets users download movies to storage cards.

Not long ago, Netflix introduced a new feature in its app for Android allowing users to save movies to their phones internal storage for offline viewing, a move that proved to be very popular; but at the same time frustrating for those devices with limited storage and without microSD cards support.

Today, Netflix has published a new update to the Store that adds support for saving downloads to storage cards for offline viewing and saving precious space on our devices. iPhone users are out of luck because Apple devices do not have storage cards slot. 

Now, you won't be able to view the downloaded movies on another device. So forget about lending your storage cards to your friends to watch your movies.

Grab the update in Google Play Store and start saving your favorite movies/shows to your storage card.

TuneIn for Android now launches faster.

TuneIn Radio brings the world's largest collection of radio stations to your Android device, that's over 100,000 stations for your listening pleasure with categories including songs, podcasts, shows and more. The app is also cross-platform, therefore available on Windows Phone, iOS and Windows. TuneIn also has a social touch in that you can share what you're listening with your followers and vice-versa.

The app has been updated today with a few new features and the usual bug fixes and improvements. First in the list of features is TuneIn will now stop playback when you close the app in the recent app lists too. Secondly TuneIn has "cleaned up startup flow which should make the app launch faster."

The premium version of TuneIn gives you access to every live NFL, MLB, NBA, & NHL game, commercial-free music stations, unlimited audiobooks and more.

Get TuneIn in Google Play Store:

• Free
• Premium

New chat rooms and player attributes comparison in SofaScore for Android.

My favorite sports app on Android, SofaScore has been updated with some new features soccer fans will like. The app version has changed to version 5.33.0 and offers the following new features:

More chat rooms for you to share your thoughts with other fellow soccer fans in new team and player dedicated chat rooms. 

Comparison of player attributes can be found in the player details and will offer their attributes overview. Once you've found the attribute - no seriously, this is hilarious - that interests you, you can search for other players and compare their attributes.

For those users who are lucky enough to have their devices running Android Nougat, SofaScore has added a quick tile in Android's pull down settings menu to enable and disable notifications. I'm waiting for tonight's English Premier league games to see how this new feature works and if it adopts Nougat's bundled notifications.

Finally the update provides average player ratings  in match lineups before the game. 

Checkout SofaScore in Google Play Store. It's free.

Microsoft updates Excel, PowerPoint & Word for Android. Excel can open files that contain form controls.

Today Microsoft has updated Excel, PowerPoint and Word for Android. 

In Excel, the software giant added support for form controls. Excel for Android will be able to open files that contain form controls. If you're wondering what are form controls, here's a short explanation from Microsoft:

"You use Form controls when you want to easily reference and interact with cell data without using VBA code, and when you want to add controls to chart sheets. For example, after you add a list box control to a worksheet and linking it to a cell, you can return a numeric value for the current position of the selected item in the control."

PowerPoint gets a new feature that lets users share one slide instead of the whole presentation - which is very convenient. Microsoft also added support for Office Lens to capture whiteboards and add them to a slide.

Word also gets support for Office Lens capture of Whiteboards to add to your documents after cleaning up and cropping the capture.

Download: Excel   PowerPoint   Word

Google announces three useful Google+ new features.

Google+, Google's social network will receive an update next week, four days after Donald Trump's inauguration. This update brings with it some useful features and shows that Google is still serious about Google+ despite failing to attract users the same way its competitors do - Facebook has over 1 billion users while Google+ has about 100 million only, a bunch of zeroes less. Let's see what's in that update:

Hiding low-quality comments - Finally users will be able to have some control on comments on posts, which Google says will let users "focus on the comments that matter most." Users can still click "View more comments" to see them all.

Showing you more of what matters - Google+ has been redesigned to fit more information on the screen and less white space. Google also added zoom functionality to Google+ web.

Bringing back events - The last feature is for Google+ web only which will see the the coming back of Events. Beginning January 24, Google+ web will support the creation and joining of events.  

Will these updates make you use Google+ more?

Source: Google's blog

Microsoft Arrow latest update brings customization of icon and name of individual app.

Another Microsoft app for Android was updated today, introducing some nice and useful features. Microsoft Arrow is a beautiful launcher for Android and the default launcher on my S7 Edge. This launcher is smart enough to learn my habits and put the apps I use most within finger reach. The app itself, compared to other launchers, is simple enough to use and does not require much effort to setup.

Microsoft has updated Arrow with a bunch of new features, letting users customize the icon and name of individual apps. All that is needed is a press and hold on an app to change its name or assign another icon to it. A button in the edit mode has a link to Google store to download the icons packs.

Version 2.9.2 of Arrow Launcher also introduces and backup and restore feature to save your app layout and settings. This comes in handy in case you need to reinstall Arrow - just restore and Arrow is at it was before.

The update also includes the following:

• Wallpaper enhancements - more wallpaper options, resizing, resolution tweaks, and loading optimizations.
• Bug and crash fixes.

Microsoft Arrow for Android is available free in Google Play Store.

Select multiple items in Microsoft OneDrive with hold and drag gesture.

Microsoft OneDrive was updated today with a pretty neat feature. In version 4.8 of the app, you can hold and drag to select multiple items in the Photos and tiles view. A very convenient feature that lets you quickly select multiple photos with a simple gesture. And should you need to select non-contiguous photos, simply repeat the same hold and drag gestures on the next photos. A cool feature you can start using by downloading or updating Microsoft OneDrive for Android in Google Play Store.

WhatsApp Messenger for Android now plays videos right away.

WhatsApp for Android has been updated and now the app "plays videos right away without waiting for them to download first." I tested this new feature and it works like they say. The video started playing right away while still downloading in the background; a much pleasant experience than staring at the downloading icon. To enjoy this feature, your device must run Android 4.1 and above. And that's not all, the videos will play instantly only if sent from the updated version of WhatsApp. Make sure you tell your friends to update by going to Google Play Store.

Tabs navigation is much, much faster in Yammer now.

Yammer is or tries to be the Facebook of enterprises. The company has been acquired by Microsoft a few years ago and it seems the team has kept its independence within the company. However, I'm not sure Yammer is the goto platform when it comes to collaboration within the enterprise. Microsoft, obviously, uses Yammer internally. They updated it with some serious performance improvements, to the point of stating that the "Loading icon is an endangered symbol". In other words, navigating through the Groups, Feed, Inbox and Notifications tabs will be "much, much faster now."

Download the update in Google Play Store.

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides updated with Page setup, IMAGE function and more.

Happy New Year dear readers. I hope all went well for you during the Holidays seasons. Now that the party is over and we're all back to work, here's an update to Google Suite of productivity apps available for download in Google Play Store.

Google Docs and Sheets got some new features. Docs now lets users change the orientation, paper size and color in Page setup. A new IMAGE function in Sheets will display images inside cells.

This update also adds some new features in terms of new files support with Docs now capable of exporting files in EPUB format and OpenDocument Text (.odt). Docs will also handle the import of .odt files. Slides will also support the same features.

Before heading to Google Play Store to download the update, note that these features are only available when the device has a data connection.

Download:

• Google Docs
  
• Google Sheets
  
• Google Slides