Google’s Drive app for Android just got a major redesign that brings the Google Now-like card-style look the company introduced with Google Now to its mobile productivity app.

This new look, which Google says is cleaner and simpler than the previews design, will likely be the first thing users notice, but the company has also added a number of new features to the app. Most of these are small, such as the ability to download copies of your files to your Android device, but the new document-scanning features open up a whole new range of use cases for Drive.

The scanner tool, for example, which you can now find under the “Add New” menu, allows you to easily turn paper documents like receipts, letter and billing statements into PDFs. Thanks to Google’s advanced optical character-recognition technology, you can also easily search them later on. This definitely feels a bit like Evernote and it’ll be interesting to see if Google will continue to go down this path in the future updates to the app.

Also new in this version is an updated editing experience for Google Sheets spreadsheets. Users can now adjust font types and sizes for their spreadsheets and change cell text colors and cell alignment right from the application. The app now also finally supports Google’s Cloud Print.

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When it comes to productivity apps, Office is still clearly the market leader, and Microsoft is now also quickly iterating on its online apps for Office. When it comes to its competition with Google’s online productivity apps, though, it’s hard to figure out if Microsoft is feeling superior or threatened (or a bit of both). Earlier today, I talked to Michael Atalla, the director of product marketing for Office 365 at Microsoft. In his view, Google doesn’t really get how businesses use productivity apps.

Businesses, Atalla told me, are looking to find the right mix of tools from companies they trust. He believes Microsoft has the “broadest vision of productivity” that includes everything from the basic Office tools like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, to database servers, Skype and Lync for connectivity and real-time presence indicators, and support for multiple platforms.

Productivity, he said, “is more than just working in the browser” (a clear nod in Google’s direction), because organizations also want security policies, the ability to work with data on-premise and off-premise, and a full set of business-focused capabilities (including business analytics, for example) — some of which can’t yet be replicated in a browser or just aren’t part of the standard online productivity suites yet.

He also noted that while Google provides businesses and consumers with the same set of tools, “one size doesn’t fit all.” And while Microsoft “deeply understands that businesses need capabilities that go beyond consumer needs,” he clearly implied that Google doesn’t. Google’s focus, he somewhat jokingly added, seems to be on Glass and not on the productivity apps on Drive.

Google’s I/O developer conference will kick off next Wednesday, and chances are the company will announce at least a few updates to its productivity suite. Its acquisition of QuickOffice has given Google access to better technologies to provide Office users with the kind of high-document fidelity that only the Office Web Apps currently offer online.

I can’t help but think that Microsoft is trying to preempt some of these announcements with the release of its Office Web Apps roadmap earlier this week and its overall publicity campaign around productivity (and it’s somewhat infamous Scroogled campaign).

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Pi.pe, the file transfer and synchronization service which emerged from San Francisco-based Pixelpipe, has previously served as one of the only serious utilities to move photos and other media files between all the various cloud services. Since its launch a little over a year ago, Pi.pe’s focus has been primarily on backup and sharing. But it was missing an option for ordering prints – something which most services focused on photo management today offer. Today, that changes.

The company is now launching Pi.pe Prints, which allows users to print photos hosted all over the cloud to locations like Walgreens, CVS, and soon Shutterfly, Tesco, and Fuji Film, too – the latter likely in about a month’s time. Pricing for Walgreens and CVS is the same as is listed on their own websites (e.g. 4

Video-editing app Magisto is picking up users, especially in the Android ecosystem, and it’s giving those users a new way to add a creative touch to the videos they produce. Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, the new Magisto Android app offers a way for users to doodle on their videos, create new borders, and generally add a bit of flair to their videos.

Magisto is best known for automatically creating interesting videos out of content that its users have already shot. Users simply pick some videos they’d like edited, upload them to the cloud, and Magisto does all the hard work of assembling them together in a new and interesting way. Users pick themes and music to set the mood they’d like, and Magisto’s automatic editing algorithm does the rest.

While that’s been a popular way for users to very quickly make their home movies actually watchable, Magisto is now giving them a way to better personalize videos. The new Draw Video feature will let them add their own doodles, set and color in borders, and generally add another layer of interactivity to their videos.

For Magisto, the addition of the Draw feature to its Android app comes as it focuses more on the Google-owned mobile operating system and the Google ecosystem in general. That includes integration with Google Drive, enabling its users to select and add videos that are stored in the cloud storage service. With Google Drive integration, Magisto also enables users to sync all newly created videos directly in that storage service.

The startup has doubled its number of downloads since the beginning of the year, growing from 3.5 million downloads in January to more than 7 million today. The startup has also seen greater adoption among Android users lately than iOS users. Part of that might stem from the relatively large number of mobile video-editing apps available for the iPhone versus those that are part of the Android ecosystem.

Due to all the different manufacturers, devices, and form factors of Android devices, there aren’t a ton of video-editing apps for Android users. Magisto can skirt most of the fragmentation problems that video app makers on Android face because all its processing happens in the cloud, rather than on the video device itself.

Mobile video editing and publishing continues to be a big opportunity, with other startups like Socialcam and Viddy and Twitter’s Vine all seeking to change the way people use video from their mobile phones. Magisto is hoping that by providing a little bit of editing and a little bit of pizzazz, it’ll be able to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack.

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Google keeps integrating Google+ deeper into all of its products and today it’s Drive’s turn. When you open a file in Drive, you will now see the Google+ profile pictures of other viewers at the top of the document. Hovering over them brings up their Google+ card with their cover image and which Google+ circle you currently have them in. This, Google says, will make it easier to see who you are collaborating with on any given Drive document.

Google is also making it a bit easier to start group chats in Drive. You can now simply select the new chat button at the top right of the page and start chatting away. In the previous version, you first had to open up a drop-down menu to see who else was looking at a document and then start a chat from there.

Anonymous Chupacabra

In case there is an anonymous user who is looking at your document (which could happen if you decide to share your file through a link or with somebody who doesn’t have a Google account), Google will now identify them as an “anonymous [animal name].”

There seem to be quite a few of those, as Google Operating System’s Alex Chitu noted last week when Google first started testing this feature publicly, ranging from “Anonymous Anteater” to “Anonymous Dinosaur,” with a few kraken and chupacabras thrown in for good measure.

Google says these new features will roll out over the next few days. It also looks as if these new features won’t appear for all file types just yet. Google specifically highlights Google Sheets as a tool that will get these features later than other file types on Drive.

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German consumer document management startup doo has launched an Android app to extend the access points it offers users. The app, now live on Google Play, supplements its existing Mac OS X and Windows 8 desktop apps. An iOS app is also in the works (due “shortly”, says doo).

The Android app lets doo users view and search documents stored elsewhere which they have linked to their doo account. Documents can also be downloaded locally to their Android device.

Doo’s document management software works by getting users to point it to the digital folders and accounts (such as email accounts) where documents are stored. The app then creates “smart tags” for documents, based on their content, document type, creation date and so on, to make it easier for the user to search for and locate the right one.

Doo’s software can grab document data via optical character recognition if required (enabling it to support paper document management, as well as PDFs). Its cloud can also be used for document back-up, as well as syncing access across devices.

Here’s how doo describes the new Android app:

People want to take their documents wherever they go, regardless of where they were initially created and stored. doo for Android augments doo for OS X and Windows 8 by giving our users a way to do so. Our first mobile app is currently a document reader that, when linked with a doo account, allows users to access documents from all their sources: their local hard drive, a second internal drive, an external drive, Google Drive, Dropbox and email accounts.

With on-the-go access, users nonetheless benefit from the ease and power of doo’s tag-based search. All tags applied to their documents by doo’s intelligent algorithms are automatically transferred to their Android devices. Selective download lets users individually decide, which documents to download to their Android device.

Doo landed a Series A round last June, when it launched its public beta, which took its total funding to $10m.

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Jolicloud, which last October pivoted yet again – to become Jolidrive: a “entry point”/dashboard for accessing third party cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box and also social accounts like Vimeo, Instagram and YouTube — has taken the next obvious step on this new product path and added a search function to flesh out its role as a cloud content (re)discovery service.

With the plethora of different cloud services consumers can now tap into to store stuff getting visibility on all that disparate content via a single dashboard with the ability to search across multiple services makes plenty of sense. The new search function can also be used to throw the net wider, and hunt down new content on social services, be it on YouTube or Instagram or Vimeo — so it’s designed to facilitate cloud content discovery too.

In an email notification sent to subscribers (a part of which is shown below), Jolicloud said search has been one of the “most requested features” for its new offering.

A number of users and Google now report that Gmail for Google Apps, as well as Google Drive, Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and the Admin control panel/API are currently experiencing service disruption or outage issues for some users. Others appear to be unaffected by the outage, and it’s unclear what the exact cause is yet.

In addition to the services mentioned above, Google Chat via third-party apps and Google Analytics also appear to be affected, according to user reports.

Google has responded with the following comment about the outage and its efforts to restore service for those affected:

We are currently investigating issues with Gmail, Drive and Docs as well as the Google Apps Control Panel. We are providing more information and frequent updates through our Google Apps Status Dashboard, which you can find here http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1366206964509.

We will post the root cause of the issue there when our teams have completed their investigation. In the meantime, for everyone who is affected, we apologize – we know you count on Google to work for you and we’re working hard to restore normal operation for you.

Update: Google now reports via its dashboard that service should be restored to all services except for the Admin control panel and API.

Update 2: And now the Admin control panel and API is showing green, too. We’re still waiting to hear back on any official cause from Google.

Developing…

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SendHub, the Y Combinator-backed call and messaging solution targeting business users and other organizations, is today extending its platform to include support for Android. The company had previously rolled out support for iPhone almost a year ago, promising that an Android option was on the roadmap.

The company says that demand for Android support was high – they were averaging around 30 requests per day from users who wanted an Android version of SendHub.

Like the iOS version, the new app also includes support for calling and texting over Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G or cellular voice networks, support for group messages, the ability to add auto-responders and contacts, and more. In addition, it includes support for call transfers – a feature which is currently in the Apple App Store review process, expected to launch in a week or so.

The call transfer feature, like many the company has added in recent months, is designed with the needs of businesses in mind.

SendHub, for those unfamiliar, is something like a more feature-rich alternative to something like Google Voice. While previously targeting both individuals and businesses, it went after the business market more directly with the launch of its SendHub Manger at the beginning of the year. From an online platform, organizations using Manager can access a dashboard where they can create, move, or delete lines for their staff, as well as backup and export the company’s text-based communications.

Today, a third of SendHub’s 10,000 paid users are on the business plan, and its overall conversion rate is around 2 percent, the company claims. The startup has also grown to over 100,000 users total up from 60,000 in January. It saw over $35,000 in revenue in March.

“The Manager launch has shown us that businesses – and only businesses – is really where the demand is, and where we’re going to spend our time focusing,” says SendHub co-founder Ash Rust. ”We’ve added call transfer, and other calling features like simul-ring, call forwarding, and we’re about to launch auto attendant as well, so we can really provide that full-featured PBX system in the cloud for our users.”

A conference calling feature is also in the works, and further down the road, the plan is to enable even more collaboration features, including support for files, photos, and videos, through integrations with cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and others.

“We’re squarely taking on the big telecom providers – AT&T, Verizon, etc. People are looking for flexible solutions that are optimized for their mobile devices, and frankly, don’t take forever to set up,” adds SendHub’s co-founder Garrett Johnson. “We see people coming to us looking to replace their PBX, looking to replace RingCentral, or the legacy telecom providers,” he says.

The SendHub solution is currently popular among a variety of businesses, including startups like iCracked, as well as mobile workforces – especially those in health care space, as well as some more traditional brick-and-mortars. Given its start as a solution for schools, SendHub is also used heavily in the education sector, where the company has promised a free solution for teachers will always be available.

The new Android application is available in the Google Play store here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While visiting, and judging, the Photo Hack Day at Facebook headquarters yesterday, one of the more than 60 hacks presented in a two-minute format was iMaze. The team that put it together in just a little over a day was comprised of developers, some of whom were high-school students, and it ended up being one of the most polished apps coming out of the hackathon.

With Aviary and Facebook putting on the event, some really cool things came out of it, but iMaze is one that just flat-out stuck with me. It’s simple: It turns your favorite photos into a maze. Once the maze is created, you can either make your way through it yourself or challenge your friend over the web in a real-time speed-test.

Before we get to the app itself, the team geekily put together some stats on what went into making iMaze:

• 5 People
• 24 Hours
• 1304mg of Caffine
• 1,492 Lines of Code
• 194 GitHub Commits
• 12,920 Calories
• 3 APIs

Impressive. Now to iMaze.

Since you probably have a ton of photos on your computer or tossed about all over the web, iMaze uses Filepicker.io to let you pull in photos from Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Google Drive, Google Photos, Instagram or of course your machine. Once you upload the photo, you can use Aviary to edit it down before it’s turned into an interactive maze game that changes each time you upload a photo.

Pick single player or invite a friend, and then compete with them in real-time.

Now you’re ready to compete in getting all the way through this ZuckMaze by dragging the line with your mouse:

Considering that this was a hack put together in a day, it’s pretty fun and well-designed. The iMaze team won third place overall, but I hope that they keep working on it, because it would be a fun Facebook game and app.

Once in a while, I enjoy playing hangman or Tic Tac Toe, not because I’m a gamer, but because I like doing something while I chat with my friends. Considering that these mazes are built on top of your photos, it’s a nice way to reuse images from the past and start a fun discussion with your closest pals.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch