Rest of the Day: Google Cast App Renamed to Google Home
After clearing the way for its future smart home based on voice recognition devices and smart Wi-Fi routers, Google has decided to rename the Google Cast app to Google Home, which is designed to control your smart devices. About this and much more in today’s news.
- Google Cast used to be just an app that offered content that would work with Chromecast. In keeping with their particular tendency to confuse names , they changed its name and purpose to Google Home, which is also the name of their Amazon Echo-like device . This is the second rename of the Google Cast app; it used to be called Chromecast, just like the device. Why not just launch a new application? Damn if I know. [Android Police]
- In other news. Spotify deals with malware-infected ads on its free web service. Users noticed some strange unwanted pop-ups while using the streaming service and realized they were caused by ads on Spotify. Since then, they have identified the culprits and will keep an eye on new criminals. [The Next Web]
- Netflix has just signed an agreement to show more of their films in real theaters. They are signed to iPic Entertainment, which operates a relatively small network (15 in total) of luxury cinemas. For them, this is probably more prestige than real income; they want people to know that Netflix exclusives are not a low-budget afterthought. [The Verge]
- 9to5Mac suggests that Apple’s rescheduled P&L is a reason to believe the new MacBooks could be announced in late October. There is no evidence to support this theory, but everyone agrees that new Macs are relatively inevitable, and Apple will not change the date of such a call without a good reason. [9to5Mac]
- The Pebble 2 smartwatch looks pretty and only costs $ 130. But to be honest, I stopped wearing the original Pebble because it turned out that I didn’t want to see my notifications at all. Gimmick? Just ignore the world. [Gizmodo]
- PlayStation VR: A solid headset for the price, according to Kotaku, with mediocre controllers and a camera hampering. Gizmodo, however, set a little more enthusiastically and believes that at the moment it’s pretty good for a virtual reality headset.