Google Play Launches Line of Discounted Textbooks

College is all fun and games, until you try to lift that 20-pound bag of textbooks. But Google wants to lend a hand.

The Web giant is joining the e-textbook revolution, this week rolling out a new Google Play feature for purchasing and renting digital textbooks.

Students can visit the Books section of the mobile store to find a long list of publishing partners and a comprehensive selection of higher-education titles, with everything from science to math to history to English.

Google Play Launches Line of Discounted Textbooks

"With digital textbooks, there's no need to worry about which ones you have with you and which ones you left in your dorm room," Scott Dougall, director of product management at Google, wrote in a blog entry. "Because your library is stored in the cloud, you have instant access to the titles you need — when you need them — on your Android tablet, phone, iOS device, and on the Web."

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Chrome's Password Security Hole and Other News You Need to Know

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world.

Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories. Two YouTube cofounders launched a new video iPhone app, Mixbit, which lets you edit and remix video on your mobile device. T-Mobile's Q2 results indicate that it gained 1.1 million new customers and sold 4.3 million smartphones. The mobile carrier's quarter revenue figures were up $4.4 billion from this time last year. And finally, Chrome passwords may be vulnerable, according to web designer Elliott Kember. However, Justin Schuh, head of Chrome security, said that Kember is wrong.

Chrome's Password Security Hole and Other News You Need to Know\

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Google’s Moto X is official: Motorola X8 chip, 10MP ‘Clear Pixel’ camera, and custom colors for $199

Google’s Moto X is official: Motorola X8 chip, 10MP ‘Clear Pixel’ camera, and custom colors for $199

Almost exactly two years after being acquired by Google, Motorola has released its first phone under new management: The Moto X. Representing the first true collaboration between the companies, and with Google on the verge of losing control of Android to Samsung, there’s a lot riding on the Moto X. At $200 on-contract, though, with mid-range specs, is this the phone you’ve been waiting for, or did the hyper oversell it?

Motorola X8

The device itself weighs 130 grams, or about the same as the Samsung Galaxy S4. The back of the Moto X has an aggressive taper toward the edges. At its thickest point the device is 10.4mm, but slims down to 5.6mm. A 10MP RBGC “Clear Pixel” camera in the middle of the back offers excellent low-light performance — maybe even better than the HTC One, according to our preliminary hands-on testing.

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Report: Google Plans Touch-Friendly Chrome Features

Taking a page from Microsoft's playbook, Google is reportedly prepping touch-friendly Chrome browser functions.

The latest Canary beta build includes a slide-to-navigate feature that lets users of the Chrome browser swipe left or right to move backwards or forwards in websites, The Verge reported this week.

The feature, The Verge pointed out, is almost identical to Microsoft's touch capabilities in Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8-powered mobile devices.

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New Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire HD: Specs Compared

New Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire HD: Specs Compared The second-generation Google Nexus 7 is a definite improvement over its predecessor. It's slimmer, lighter, and boasts a higher-quality screen with sharper resolution. It may be a no-brainer to upgrade from the old to the new Nexus 7, but it's harder to say whether or not it can hold its own against other tablets on the market. Does the latest Nexus 7 come out on top compared with the nearly year-old Amazon Kindle Fire HD? First, some basic design differences: The Nexus 7 is 0.3 inches longer and 0.9 inches thinner than the Kindle Fire HD. Google's newest tablet is also noticeably lighter than Amazon's tablet - 3.4 ounces lighter, in fact. Getting into the nitty-gritty details, there are other stark differences between the two tablets' capabilities. One of the most obvious is in their screen resolutions. The Nexus 7 sports an impressive 1,920-by-1,200-pixel resolution, while the Kindle Fire HD has one of 1,280-by-800 pixels; that's enough to make text considerably less crisp. The Kindle Fire HD's front-facing camera sensor is 1.3 megapixels, though the tablet doesn't have a rear one. On the other hand, the Nexus 7 features a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera sensor and a 5-megapixel rear shooter. [Source]

Chromecast Will Soon Support Hulu Plus and HBO Go

Google's Chromecast already supports Netflix and YouTube, but soon it could also gain access to Hulu Plus and HBO Go.

Hulu's Meredith Kendall told Variety that Hulu is "actively working with Google to bring Hulu Plus to the platform."

Chromecast

This follows reports that HBO Go is also headed to the device. HBO's Laura Young toldMashable, "We're actively exploring supporting Chromecast [...] but we can't comment on specific plans regarding timing."

Google's $35 Chromecast sold out almost immediately. So far, consumers have responded positively to the device that makes it easy to "fling" content from an Android or iOS smartphone.

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Will This Accessory Help Google Glass' Short Battery Life?

While only a few hundred people have gotten their hands on Google Glass, the gadget is already known to suffer from a short battery life. But one third-party accessory aims to solve this problem by providing a longer charge.

Called PWRGlass, the lithium-ion-powered, rechargeable attachment hooks onto the back of Glass. While it's not the hippest-looking accessory around — resembling a weird spinoff of Croakies — the device claims to triple Glass' battery life. What's more, it can be recharged via a USB charger.

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