Google Chrome’s latest Canary Build has some great swipe features that looks really promising. Swiping left to right will move you back and forth in your browser history. There’s also a feature to “enable pinch scale” that lets you pinch to zoom.

The touch features are needed if Google’s Chrombook is to compete with Internet Explorer on Windows 8, which already has those features. We’ll let you know when the new update rolls out for everyone.

Currently, the new browser is made for developers only and “can sometimes break down completely.” If you want to test drive  the new features, you can download the browser here. It gets updated every night.

Via the Verge

App downloads from Google Play passed downloads from Apple’s App Store for the first time. According to App Annie, Google’s app downloads were 10% higher than those from iTunes during Q2 2013.

Here is more from the App Annie blog: “Games continued to dominate the share of revenue for both app stores, and still accounted for a greater share in Google Play where it comprised over 80% of revenues vs. roughly 75% in the iOS App Store.”

Google may have the most downloads, but downloads from Apple are still bringing in the most revenue. According to the report, apps from the Apple App store generate 2.3x that of Google Play. But Apple’s market share is shrinking, as apps in Apple’s App Store generated 2.6x the revenue of Google Play apps in the prior quarter.

The internet is getting faster at Starbucks now that Google is replacing AT&T at the nation’s largest coffee chain and home away from home workstation. Google is promising a 10x boost in speed with up to 100x boost in speed in Google Fiber cities like Austin. The transition will start in August and take about eighteen months to complete. Just look for the “Google Starbucks” SSID.

Official announcement:

Coffee shop + Internet—it’s a pairing that many of us have come to rely on. WiFi access makes work time, downtime, travel time and lots of in-between times more enjoyable and productive. That’s why we’re teaming up with Starbucks to bring faster, free WiFi connections to all 7,000 company-operated Starbucks stores in the United States over the next 18 months. When your local Starbucks WiFi network goes Google, you’ll be able to surf the web at speeds up to 10x faster than before. If you’re in a Google Fiber city, we’re hoping to get you a connection that’s up to 100x faster.

Have you ever struggled to read a sign written in a foreign script? Now you can draw the characters and let Google Translate help you read the sign.

Google Translate recently rolled out handwriting support, allowing readers to input handwriting in 45 languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. You can even download a Google Chrome app to help with the process. Check it out:

suppose you see the Chinese expression “饺子” and want to know its meaning in English, but have no idea how to type these characters. Using the new handwriting input tool, you can simply draw these characters on your screen and instantly see the translation … Other text input tools in Translate include virtual keyboards, input method editors, and transliteration. They are also available in other Google products, including Gmail, Drive, Chrome, and Android.

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Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet is now available from Amazon. The 32GB edition is listed at $268.98.

The 7-inch Android-powered tablet with a high resolution screen with a max resolution of 1920*1200 pixels, higher than Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD. The new Google tablet has 2GB of RAM, weighs 10.2 oz. In addition, it features a 1.2MP front facing fixed focus camera and a 5MP rear facing camera. The device also features stereo speakers with surround sound. Here is more from the product listing:

Nexus 7 is made by ASUS and packs a serious punch. With a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and 2GB of RAM, everything runs faster. Plus, high-performance rendering ensures 3D graphics are smooth and dynamic.

Amazon is shipping the device today, a few days earlier than the product’s slated release date of July 30th.

Google has revealed its new Nexus 7 tablet, a 7-inch Android-powered tablet with a high resolution screen that boasts 323 pixels per inch totaling 2.3 million pixels in total. To put this in perspective, the iPad Mini has 163 pixels per inch on its screen and the Kindle Fire HD has 254 pixels per inch.

The new Google tablet is designed for consuming high resolution rich media content, be it digital magazines, video games or watching high definition movies with video playback at 1080p HD. Here is more from Google’s website:

At just 0.64lbs (290g), the all-new Nexus 7 is light enough to take anywhere and fits easily in bags, backpacks, and even back-pockets. With up to 9 hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of web browsing or e-reading, there’s plenty of juice to get you through the day, and built-in wireless charging means you can charge, grab, and go. Read more

Google has a new social-gaming app in the works for Android that combines Google Play with Google+. Google’s answer to Apple’s Game Center, the Google Play Games app serves as a social command center for Android users. The site, which is reportedly going live today, lets users shop for games and play games all while socializing this behavior with Google+ friends.

Google+ users can check out which friends are playing which games and follow their friend’s status achievements within different games, as they share their own play status. Google first announced the platform at its IO conference earlier this year. The site is not live yet, but CNET reports that it is slated to go live today. It is designed to work hand in hand with Google’s recently launched Google Play Games Services. Here is more from CNET:

During a press conference on Wednesday, where Play Games was introduced, Google said “hundreds” of games have added those services, with “millions” of people playing.

Google’s Gmail update last week came with a few useless tabs – but my sneaky suspicion that the search company was up to no good came true when news leaked that they were placing ads into the promotions tab as actual emails. Google, in their own defensive statement, alluded to the fact that ads are needed to power the free email service, but it doesn’t alleviate the feeling that their idea of a “better experience” means just the opposite.

As always, advertising keeps Google and Gmail free to use. We work hard to make ads safe, unobtrusive, and relevant. Instead of ads always appearing at the top of your inbox, they’ve been relegated to a more appropriate place in your Promotions tab to create a better overall experience.

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While Google+ makes up 24% of logins among social networks online leading logins over Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn, Google users are not very active on the site once they log in. In fact, according to a new report from social marketing company Gigya, only 2% of Google+ users are sharing content on the network.

According to “The Landscape of Social Login & Sharing” report, Facebook is still the number one destination for both logins and shared content among social networks capturing 52% of social logins and 50% of the content shared on social networks.

While Google+ isn’t a happening place for sharing content, other social networks like Pinterest and Twitter are facilitating a large amount of sharing online. In fact, 24% of social content is shared on Twitter and 16% is shared on Pinterest. (Via BGR).

Someday, will you have to worry about getting hacked by graffiti or posters?

Today on the Morning Media Menu, we discussed how Lookout security reportedly hacked Google Glass using a QR codes.

Google has since corrected the vulnerability, but it shows how different the world will be when every single surface has potential for digital interaction.

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