Best 5 Google Apps to Better Run Your Household

While GSuite previously known as Google apps is a blessing when it comes to office work, what many don’t know is that it can be used at home too. With all the Google apps being in one place and often integrated, GSuite / Google apps seems to work at office and at home too. Imagine if you’re a parent and have a full time job too, keeping tabs of both your work life as well as your child’s life can be a really daunting task so why not get Google apps to help you along the way?

Using Google Calendar on Google apps to help keep track of your child’s events:

Keep track of your child’s school events and appointments with Google calendar on Google apps. You can add multiple calendars for each child and put all those child’s event into one place whether it be soccer practice or a friend’s birthday party.

You can even put different colors for different children to avoid any misplacement of schedules. You can also toggle off or on each calendar if you just need to see your own schedule.

With the Google app you can also share the calendar with others, like your child’s calendar with a spouse or a care giver without the need to send your events too.

All you need to do is select the three dots near the person’s calendar option and press “settings and share”. Even when you add a new event to the calendar, Google calendar updates the calendar which has been shared without the need for you to contact that person.

Get in touch with Gmail’s multiple tabs and snooze feature on Google apps:

Gmail on Google apps has a feature whereby you can separate emails by the types of sender like for example social media emails can go in a separate tab. What this feature does is allow you to keep your mail clean and concentrate only on the things that matter without getting too overwhelmed by a lot of emails.

You can access this feature form the Settings icon on Gmail and press “configure inbox”.

The Snooze feature is an excellent way to not only declutter your inbox but to also keep track of events as and when they occur. For example keeping the confirmation for your child’s school trip for a week before the trip. This also helps you keep track of what needs to happen and when.

Google hangouts on Google apps to stay in touch:

Google hangouts as a part of Google apps, is a cool way to stay in touch with loved ones at work too. You can access Google Hangouts from your desktop and Gmail and switch between answering emails to keeping in touch with your child. You could even check if you’ve missed some notification from the family too.

Using Google maps From Google apps to travel:

You can use Google maps to reduce the time you take to reach from one place to another. Besides giving you updates on traffic on your route you can even check out if there is a shortcut to the route you’ve been taking for years. This will help you keep your schedules while getting a few minutes rest too.

G Suite: Google Apps for Work Updraded

Google Apps for Work is a suite launched by Google which includes Google’s popular web applications like Google Drive, Gmail, Google Hangouts, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. This September, Google renamed Google Apps for Work as G Suite. The name actually goes with it as it is a suite of collaboration software tools and cloud computing productivity and software offered by Google on a subscription basis.

Some features of G Suite

Google Apps for Work is not only renamed, it is also reframed. The renaming of the Google Apps for Work to G Suite was done to reflect the software’s mission in terms of putting the emphasis on collaboration, according to the company. G Suite contains the same apps which Google Apps for Work contained. G Suite also works the same way but with some differences.

The main difference in G Suite is that its utility is played by the machine’s intelligence. This simply means that this application will do all the repetitive and mechanical tasks quickly which used to take up your lot of time. The programs in G Suite have become smarter than before.

The smarter programs in G Suite

The first program to get smarter is the Google Drive for android. This will allow quick access in Drive on Android, which means, it will help you to pull out the files you need immediately whenever you would open Drive. Google Hangouts is also made easier to set up. Also, Google Calendar is made advanced by enabling Smart Scheduling.

This new version of Google apps for Work, i.e., G Suite has also added Explore to Google Docs, Slides and Sheets. In short, G Suite has made working with the apps very easily and quickly.

Some new information about G Suite

The main advances that G Suite made are –

• Quick Access – This will cut off about 50% of the time you would need to search a file form the Drive. It works with the machine’s intelligence which helps it recognize the file you need before you complete your typing. Quick Access is available with G Suite for all Android users. 
• Smart Scheduling in Calendar – In G Suite, ‘Find a Time’ lets you set up meetings or appointments much faster in Google Calendar. Also it helps you to find a room or place for your meetings. 
• Explore – Explore is nothing but Work Assistant. Explore will help you work better and faster in Docs, Sheets and Slides by bringing you the design tools, insights, and research recommendations faster. 
• Team Drive – G Suite will provide more granular control over team access to content. This is for early adopters only. 

Some more features will add on with these features as time passes on. G Suite has advanced working with the Google applications on Android by making it faster, easier and much better. This G Suite is very effective for those enterprises that rely upon machine learning capability as G Suite works with machine intelligence. G Suite is an interesting place for them to start with.

Google Duo Makes Video Calling Between Operating Systems Easier

Google’s Duo – Video Calling App

For years, Apple and Google had been competing with each other for dominance over mobile users, with Apple submitting its greater devices such as the iPhone. Google on the other hand had battled back with its Android operating system together with a sequence of mobile apps which seemed to quite flexible and well-matched with broader set of devices than the apps of Apple.

Recently, Google had featured that strategy with the release of its new mobile app, the Duo, a video calling app which is said to be a direct substitute to the FaceTime of Apple. The app tends to fit precisely in the playbook in mobile of Google.

Google had progressively provided its software as well as internet service comprising of Google Maps, Google Docs and Google Photos to iPhone users and all these apps had been convincing substitute to the proprietary apps of Apple such as Apple Maps, Photos and Notes since they tend to function on a broader variety of devices inclusive of Macs, Android devices, Windows PCs and iPhones.

FaceTime can only be utilised to call others having the Apple devices though Duo enable the user to place video calls between Android as well as iPhone users and substantially increases the number of people with whom one intends to have a video discussion.

Great Product/Increase Use of Video Calling with Android Users

Google had mentioned in a statement in an indirect shot at Apple that one should not have to worry about whether your call can connect or if your friend is utilising the same type of device one is using. It is no wonder that almost half of U.S. adults do not make video calls on mobile.

All this encouraged the strategy of Google in attracting iPhone users over to Android. It is said that Google’s apps usually tends to operate better on Android devices than the iPhones and hence more users seem to get hooked on the core apps of Google with less reason for being loyal to Apple.

The head of communication products, Nick Fox had stated that the top priority with Duo was to create a great product and to increase the use of video calling with Android users. However he adds that making the Android much more attractive than the iPhone owners had been a secondary motive. He informs that the appeal of Duo was that it seemed to be simple to use, was fast and much more extensively accessible.

Switching – Android to iPhone – Highest

He commented saying that their view is video calling and should work for all. If one can only call half the people they know, that is very limiting. Apple does not seem to be concerned by the moves of Google.

When the falling sales last month had been reported by the iPhone maker, Timothy D. Cook, chief executive of Apple had highlighted that the rate where people were switching from Android-based devices to iPhone had been the highest the company had ever seen.

He had mentioned in a call without revealing the precise figure that their year-to-date iPhone sales to switchers were the greatest they have seen in any nine-month period. A spokeswoman of Apple had refrained from commenting beyond the comments of Mr Cook.

Google's 'Smart' Food Diary Is Actually Kind Of Dumb

Google – Automated Food Diary to Estimate Calorie Count

Google has been building an automated food dairy which could help to estimate calorie counts from the images taken of our meal according to a report in Popular Science. Named Im2Calories, the project is said to utilise technology from DeepMind, which is an AI start-up Google acquired in 2014. Google has filed a patent for Im2Calories, however there is no mention yet on when the service is likely to be made available.

Meanwhile, several other companies are making similar attempts on the projects like Im2Calories which are being supported by equally questionable science. Im2Calorie is said to measure the size of the food, in absolute terms as well as relative to what is on the plate and could also identify the condiments. According to the report, it does not even matter if the picture tends to be high resolution or not. Presently, the technology is still imprecise in estimating calorie counts.

According to Kevin Murphy, a researcher at Google acknowledges as much to Popular Science stating that `it’s okay fine, maybe we get the calories off by 20%. It does not matter’. The focus for Google is in minimizing those inaccuracies over a period of time, claims Murphy. There does not seem to be any doubt in Google’s ability in collecting and processing data from large section of users though the company would still have to solve a big problem for the function of Im2Calories – calorie counting could be unreliable.

Counting Calories – Look at Kinds of Calories Eaten

A main study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2011 observed that the quality of food is a main contributing factor than quantity. Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, lead author of the study informed the New York Times - `Conventional wisdom – to eat everything in moderation eat fewer calories and avoid fatty foods, isn’t the best approach.

Just counting calories won’t matter much unless you look at the kinds of calories you’re eating’. However if calories seems to a good measure for health, food labels, - the basis of Google’s date, has also considered to be inaccurate. In 2010, there has been much uncertainty with regards to calorie counting where David Kirchoff, the CEO then of the Weight Watchers acknowledged that `calorie-counting has become unhelpful’ for those intending to lose weight. Since then the company is said to have abandoned its calorie first approach.

Im2Calories – A Potential Tool

Im2Calories, which is the potential tool, had been announced at the Rework Deep Learning Summit, recently. Murphy had unveiled a project that utilises `sophisticated deep learning algorithms to analyse a still image of food, estimating how many calories could be on the plate. In one instance, the system viewed an image and counted `two eggs, two pancakes and three strips of bacon.

Although the food stuff does not seem to be a universal unit of measurement, the system could scale the size of each piece of foot with regards to the plate together with the condiments. Murphy has no intention of shaming users with this new system but wants to have the `process of keeping a food diary and awareness of foods and this seems to be much easier than feeding information manually to a food app which could include portions of food items, types of food and much more.

It is assumed that the latest tool Im2Calories could be popular especially in the US since obesity tends to be a crisis. However, even if Im2Calories does not seem to be accurate, Murphy is of the opinion that the new system will tend to have an impact on the users.

Teachers and Students Will Get Free Unlimited Drive Storage from Google

Goggle drive is one of the best cloud storage platforms, and if you are student or teacher, so it can be much better for you. With the aim to ramp up its commitment towards education, the leading search engine Google is decided to offer unlimited drive storage for students and teacher at no cost. This initiative is similar to Drive for Work and will known as “Drive for Education”.

Features of Google Apps for Education:

Unlimited storage facility will support the files as big as 0.5TB in size. For teachers, Google normally target the classroom with new classroom tool, which will help the teachers to create and organize the assignments of school. To avail the facility of unlimited drive storage, the person should have an active .edu email address and your school will need to be signed up for Education App and these Apps are free for educational institutions. As a incentive for sign-up process Google is offering unlimited storage in free the service is set to roll out in up-coming weeks. Teachers and students will be able to access the data with the help of internet-connected tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc. According to product manager of Google Apps for Education, Ben Schrom “All the files uploaded on Google drive will be encrypted, at all the Google servers. Google Apps for Education will enable the users to organizing all Classroom assignments automatically into Google drive folders.

All non-profit institutions will exempted from ad-related scanning of data, if they will be part of Google Apps for Education initiative. It means Google will not scan the data, which will be uploaded by teachers and students and it will not targeted for advertisements. This Educational App will combine the Google Calendar and Gmail, with other productivity tools such as; Google docs, sheets and slides.

Microsoft's Office Vs Google Apps':

Microsoft's Office is seems to be the biggest competitor for Google Apps', as Microsoft's Office have powerful presence in the education market since 1990s. Google is attracting the peoples to open and edit office- format documents online, with a platform from where they can easily share the same document with other Google doc users. It seems to impossible to compare the Google Apps' success and Microsoft Office because no one has release total revenue or user figures. According to recent reports, Office 365 subscription had more than 5.6 million subscribers in all consumer segments for Q2, which includes PC apps and online versions. And these figures were more than 1 million subscribers from previous quarter. Whereas; Microsoft did not release any figure for business subscriptions or traditional licensed software.

Free unlimited storage for teachers and students is good deal for learning students, as for personal use its annual subscriptions cost $70 for Office 365 and for premium business it cost $180. For Google Apps for Education every user is free to use 30GB of space, but upgrade cost $5 per month per user with the facility of up-gradation of 100GB space.

The anticipation of Google Fit at Google I/O

Rise of Smartphones

Mobile devices or smartphones' applications focussing on health management is the latest trend that is rising in the mobile phones' market. Today most of the leading companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft are trying to promote a healthy lifestyle with the introduction of such Apps, that will help a person to attain a good health on a long term basis in an easy way.

Anticipating the Launch of Google Fit

Like the other competitors Google too is planning to launch its fitness health management App, which has been named Google Fit, most probably in their Google I/O conference. Google has taken this wise step with all probability not to lag behind in competition. As per sources, this App has been planned for the collection and aggregation of data from many other popular fitness trackers.

More Competition

Google has already been in the market posing quite a good competition to its competitors. The introduction of such a useful health service, anticipates a challenge to companies like Apple.

Especially with the dawn of Apple's health management App Health Kit, Google too needed to step ahead to provide similar services to the people at large. While this App can be quite like a marketing strategy for some, on the other hand, for the common people who love to stay fit, this App is really more like a blessing.

Apart from the expected features, many sources also claim that this App may partner other health devices that would be too synchronizing the health activities on a regular basis, thus making a platform which is called Android Wear, thus allowing and enabling the users to track their regular activities like steps as well as heart rate for interfacing with the Google's preferred cloud-based service.

However, some information is yet unclear and vague with respect to this health service. Many sources yet cannot confirm whether this Google Fit App will be a built in service for the next Android version or the users need to download it independently.

Helping Hand for Good Health

Google had been in this health service field for quite a long time. After the shutdown of Google Health that was also quite like a health portal, the Google Fit seems to say that Google is always concerned with the health of the people at large.

There are always a pretty number of health care Apps in the Google Play already. One example is the game Zombies, Run! The game makes the combination of gamification as well as fitness techniques since the players need to escape from the zombies either by running or by jogging.

But the Google Fit might actually push all such related health services a bit behind since this might be the official health service App. There are chances that people might actually take their health seriously, as this App might be regulating their daily or regular physical activities.

Till now Google has been quite dominant in the market because of its Android products and services. With the release of this App, Google might actually continue to stay ahead in competition. Till then we all need to wait!

The Bapp of all Apps

Askme – Provision with a Convenient Platform

Askme provides a platform for viewers which are convenient and easy, besides being time conservative with amazing results. A free Android app, for the convenience of the users to search for places to shop, drink, play, relax, and even to get updates from active community in the surrounding areas, helping in providing inputs for appropriate decision together with various other details of millions of businesses within the city, is made available for the benefit of the users in the form of `Askme’.

This app known as `The Bapp of all Apps’, is an internal networking tool, an `All in 1’, app enabling users to navigate through details of merchants and listings, some of the best deals made available to users, classified ads, purchases that can be done instantly which is made available, free of cost.

This free app is of great benefit to the user when faced with situations in locating a store which can be traced through this app. Askme provides all the required details with regards to the information needed by the user, be it classified, a local search or even the latest deals on various products that are made available to the customers. All these information are readily available without the need of visiting any outlet which is available right in the palm of your hand.

An App with Immense Benefits

This is one of the apps with immense benefit to the user which helps them in searching for businesses in the area of one’s choice, availability of attractive deals that have been offered by some of the most popular businesses, some of the latest classifieds on mobile devices, cars, real estate, jobs and much more through Ul and a good database to choose from, enabling the user to navigate through these links.

Users also get the opportunity of adding reviews, tips and photos for favourite businesses, read reviews that have been posted by other users, enabling them to know more about good businesses in the locality, the privilege to share some of the favourite businesses with friend through SMS, Facebook, Twitter and email. Besides this the individual can also check-up addresses and phone numbers from the various businesses that are listed there and get in touch with them instantly with the use of this app.

To top it all, additional business information like ratings, payment methods together with various other information are available to enable the user to make quick decision on appropriate choices that are available at the platform and get in touch with them through Askme app.

Bridge in Sharing Idea – Company & Individual

Networking presently is main the purpose of every function and activity of life and Askme had been providing the bridge in idea sharing for both individuals as well as the company with the use of the Ul to direct the user to the desired platform.Their focus lies in providing the best Android experience that is possible by delivering regular updated apps together with the latest features and functions enabling individual to perform with ease and efficiency in the various activities.

Everything is now made available on a single platform which will be helpful in getting all the information from a single app. It is a great choice for users to function with speed together with quality performance.

Classroom – Online Tool – Google Apps for Education

Google is planning to offer a new online tool in its Google Apps for Education suite known as Classroom. This offer is designed with teachers in mind intending to help them with their daily work in assistance with the efficient organisation and creation of the assignments, needed in the education of their students.

 It provides a simple way to give feedback to students on individual basis while communicating more easily with the classes.

 Classroom, the new tool which was unveiled on Teacher Appreciation Day, makes use of several Google services which include Google Doc, Drive and Gmail to enable teachers to create and organise their assignments swiftly, providing feedback in an efficient manner and communicate with their class with ease.

It was designed with the intention of providing hand in hand with teachers to enable them to save time, improve communication with the students, and keep the classes organized enabling them to function smoothly in their daily work.

Simple and Easy – More Time to Teach and Learn

Classroom is based on the principle of making the educational tool, simple and easy to use, giving teachers the opportunity on more time to teach as well as for the students, more time to learn. Google’s former math teacher, Zach Yeskel himself wrote in a blog post announcing the news.

This free tool is focused in making it easier in the creating and collection of assignments paperless, which can be seen quickly on who has or has not completed the work, providing direct, real time feedback to individual students.

 Moreover, it also helps in improving class communication wherein the teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time, thereby improving communication in and out of the class.

Drive Folder – Individual Assignment/Student

Besides, the capabilities of being organised with the classroom, automatically creating Drive folders for every individual assignment as well as the student, where the students can see easily whatever is due on their Assignment page.

 The Mountain View Company would be inviting a limited number of interested applicants to try it, somewhere early next month. Educators interested in trying out Classroom could apply for the same.

Classroom tool is easy to set up where teachers can add students directly or even share a code with their class to join which takes around a few minutes to set up. Its simple paperless assignment workflow enables teacher in creating, reviewing, and grade assignment swiftly all at a single location.

Improve Organization/Enhance Communication

It helps from the point of improving organization, wherein students can see all their assignments on an assignment page, where all the class materials that are automatically filed into a folder in Google Drive.

Enhancing communication enables teachers to send announcements and question instantly and with student having the facility to post to the stream, they are in a better position to help out their classmates.

Overall it is affordable and secure and like the rest of our Google Apps for Education services, Classroom does not have any advertisements, does not use the contents or the student’s data for advertising purpose and is free for all schools.

Classroom would be available to any school using Google Apps for Education by September this year.

Google to Launch Improved Android Camera App

Google is currently working on a revised camera app for Android according to the sources. The new camera app is to get more photo and video capabilities, and this will even appear for all Kitkat devices in future. Now Google is currently running internal tests of a new camera app for Android, Sources reports with reference to confidential sources, which were not disclosed.

Thus, the entire user interface of the Android camera app is redesigned and will be re launched; in order to control the camera functions of an Android device should be easier. The camera app gets directly to function with which can be put out of focus by blur the background. This is intended primarily for portraits, so that the subject's better accentuate. In addition, the panoramic shot function has been revised and optimized the photo -sphere mode.

Both the results will be better accordingly. As part of this new app, lot of enhancements to the view of shooting photos has been optimized. Thus, the new camera app will show 100 percent quality and with easy handling, which shows the quality in photos.

So far, it could happen that unwanted objects protrude into the picture because they were not visible on the viewfinder image because of the camera app showed only a part of the future picture. But these will be the thing of recent past once the apps are working. The new camera app is going to be extensible.

 Third parties can develop filters for the app to include such effects in the camera app and can apply to photos. This is to the creative possibilities of the app to be expanded. At present it is still unclear how interesting it is for developers to offer matching filters.

The new camera app will not only be part of a new Android firmware. Owner of an existing Android device so do not wait until the Android system has been updated accordingly. Google plans to offer the camera app as a separate update.

The app will then be available for all Smartphones and tablets running Android 4.4 aka Kitkat at least with. Therefore the new camera app requires the latest version of Android currently. And the exact release date of the camera app is not known.