Google has a habit of providing a multitude of small updates to its apps and services as opposed to large release announcements. This has the upside of consistent gradual improvement to services; when a new user comes along, they often find a different, improved product, from someone who began using one as little as a month prior; on the flip-side, updates often go unnoticed, even if they're fairly significant.
Most recently, the firm has updated its Google Now app, built-in to Android 4.1 devices, adding the capacity to:
- Display nearby events
- Suggest content for research
- Display the weather for destinations
- Display upcoming birthdays
- Display monthly summary of walking and cycling distance
- Display GMail boarding passes and bookings (for limited companies to begin with)
- Perform camera searches at shops and at museums
- Scan a barcode, recognise a song or post to Google+ with the commands:
- "Scan this barcode"
- "What's this song?"
- "Post to Google Plus"
We're yet to have the "What's this song?" command work for us, however we can confirm that this update has indeed rolled-out in the UK.
Google Translate has also received a small make-over and can now cope with scanning Chinese, Korean and Japanese characters, though only horizontally for now, with vertical support on the way. Not enough for you? Well basic handwriting recognition has now also been introduced; officially printed documents are no-longer the app's only food source.
Keep up the good work Google!
