For owners of a device with hardware keys instead of onscreen buttons (Galaxy S3, Note 2, DNA, etc.), accessing Google Now with a simple swipe up from the “Home” button just isn’t possible. Some people either have to long press their Home button or access it from the up-top Search widget. This quick tip will help anyone using Nova Launcher or other third party launchers to assign a simple swipe gesture to their app drawer button for easy access to Google Now.

This morning, Google Search received an update, but it must be quite minor given that Google didn’t update the changelog. The app did recently receive a big update, so we are guessing this is more of a bug fixing update or something along those lines.

If you haven’t already, go grab it.

Play Link

Cheers ViZZiATO!

With the newest Google Now update, Google built in a new Voice Action that allows you to scan barcodes with your camera. All you have to say is, “Scan barcode” after hitting the voice search button. But if the voice search button isn’t handy or you don’t want to speak out loud to your phone, you can access it another way.

If you open Google Now, scroll to the bottom and hit the 3-dotted menu button in the right corner. As long as you have updated your Google Now, you should see a new option that says “Search with camera.” Tap that, and find something to search for with your camera.

So far, I’ve had good luck snapping photos of text, but logos or objects, not so much. Give it a shot!

Cheers Nishant!

With today’s update to Google Now, we have more than 25 cards that can pop up and show us information depending on our location, recent searches, or location. It can even pull from our Gmail inboxes to track packages, remind us of hotel or restaurant reservations, and make sure we get to our flight on time. As a Jelly Bean user, it’s probably my favorite feature, and one that I’m glad more and more phones are now taking advantage, thanks to recent updates.

Below, and thanks to Google Support, we have the entire list of Google Now cards that can pop up on your device. Since many of us won’t have the opportunity to see some of these, we thought we’d share. 

A major Google Search update just hit the Google Play store for devices running Android 4.1+ (Jelly Bean). The update introduces a handful of new cards for Google Now along with some new voice actions. You will now see Now cards for events happening nearby, suggestions to help with research, boarding passes (United only for now), weather for upcoming travel destinations, and more. On the voice actions side of things, you can tell your phone to post to Google+, ask what song is playing, and have your phone to scan a barcode.

Go grab it! 

Since the HTC DROID DNA doesn’t have an on-screen Home button that can be swiped up to access Google Now, we wanted to make sure that you knew the easiest way to access it. It’s simple, really. All you need to do is long-press on the hardware Home button and, bam! There doesn’t appear to be a way to access it from the lock screen, which is unfortunate, but this trick works from anywhere else on the phone. Enjoy!

This week, Popular Science announced the winner of their annual Innovation of the Year award. In years past, they’ve named the Atari gaming system and also the iPhone as winners, but their Editor-in-Chief made a special point for Google Now, marking it as the first time that the thin line between humans and their devices was crossed with such pleasant ease. Google Now “innocently” collects our data, tracks our movements, and then offers suggestions for things before we even think about it.

Last night, and possibly because the month of October came to a close, Google Now started showing a new card to a number of our readers. That new card is a pedometer that has been tracking their steps and miles biked over the last couple of months, behind the scenes. I say “behind the scenes” because this is a card that we have yet to see or hear about. In fact, I took a quick look through Google Now settings and could not find this feature mentioned.