Gadgetory

hello again ladies and gentlemen I'm Joe handy the Android authority app guy and welcome to Google Play weekly episode 5 we have a lot to talk about this week Xbox music gets released Foursquare lets you look at menus and Roku says up yours to the chromecast without further ado let's get started the first thing we'll talk about this week is Google Play Music Google Play Music is already a premium music streaming service that lets you upload twenty thousand of your own songs and if you pay for it play any song in the Google Play Store with this latest update you can now listen to radio stations based on music genre it is a fairly easy feature to access once you pay for Google Music you simply go into the app go under radio and then select the genre tab you have roughly two dozen genres to choose from including rock pop and classical it even includes my favorite genre which is ska music inside each genre are a set of sub genres which only increases your options Foursquare received a sizeable update this week and it actually adds to the functionality the social media network is already based on location but now you have another way to interact with that location you can now view over 43 million menus from 500,000 restaurants it's been seamlessly integrated into Foursquare seemingly ever-changing interface when you view a location that has a menu the menu option will appear using it you can browse items and see if any of them sound good to you this is not only good for places you're at but a good way to see if there's anything good on the menu where you're going a new scare story has been circulating around the internet the last few days it was started by Symantec makers of the popular Norton AntiVirus Symantec stated that in the month of August over 1,000 fraudulent applications were submitted to the Google Play Store according to reports Symantec says these apps were downloaded about 8,500 times but could have been as high as 10,000 before you lose your shorts and download another three anti-virus apps keep in mind that as long as you pay attention to what's going on and downloaded from trusted app developers this will probably never happen to you Microsoft is showing signs that they are finally seeing the light because they have released their first fully functioning application to the Google Play Store it is Xbox music and it does compete favorably on many levels with many competitors it has a decent number of songs at a decent price point and it's definitely worth checking into it's early release so they haven't made it compatible with every device just yet for instance I couldn't get it on my HTC one if you do pick it up you'll have 30 days to try it out for free but then you have to pay $9.99 a month or $99.90 a year for service if you're in the market for a new streaming service a 30 day trial is more than enough of a reason to try it out since the chromecast came out life has been a little difficult for set-top boxes the chromecast doesn't have all the functionality of a set-top box but it does have most of the functionality needed to replace it entirely Roku has come out with an update that adds a feature and it's the only feature that the chromecast doesn't have with the update you can now stream local content directly from your Android device for many who keep up with such development you cannot do that on a chromecast for now it's compatible with pretty much all Roku devices but only a handful of Android devices including the galaxy s3 and s4 the Nexus 7 2012 model the HTC One and the Nexus 4 is who wants to see some trending apps this week as usual if you want to check any of these apps out the links are in the video description first up is a fun little time waster called stickman downhill in this game you use tilts braking and acceleration to propel your way over obstacles and through levels it's simple easy and quick to play and has google game support for leaderboards and achievements also it's free really there's no reason not to try this one out if you're looking for something that has some functionality our only app this week with that is touch your pro it comes from the same people who brought you go launcher what this app does is use a floating point that you can tap you then have access to some favorite apps whether toggles and a variety of other settings it's a great way to reduce home screen clutter without losing functionality our second time waster game on the list this week is impossible lines this simple and challenging game makes you move a green dot to the finish without running into any of the lines on the screen the difficulty increases as the levels get more difficult because when you start moving the obstacles disappear and you must use your memory to find your way through simple Rockets is definitely our favorite trending game this week the premise of the game is pretty simple you build rockets and then fly them around to obtain certain challenges or you can make them fly turn them around and make them blow up it allows people to be creative which is nice and it's genuinely fun to play last up this week is another game called toast time in this little 8-bit game you are a toaster that shoots toasted bad guys to defend a clock you can bounce around by shooting toast at the ground and get upgraded toast by shooting crates it's more fun than you should reasonably be able to have with toasts once again I'm Joe handy the Android authority app guide feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel and if you like this show check out some of our other ones the social media links and the written companion to this video are in the video description thank you for watching and have a wonderful day