Setting Up Your Home Office

Artificial intelligence may be threatening to take your job, but the tech can also help you find a new one, Google thinks: It's just rolled out a new AI-powered tool called "Career Dreamer," which leverages AI algorithms to help you identify roles that are suited to your skills and experience. Google says it's worked with groups including students, recent graduates, adult learners seeking a career change, and veterans to help develop the tool. It's part of the wider "Grow with Google" portal, which offers a variety of tools and guides for job seekers and businesses—many of which involve some form of AI. …

Google's AI Mode has new agentic capabilities for booking event tickets and beauty and wellness appointments, so AI will do most of the work to find and curate the best options based on your inputs. Google first launched agentic capabilities for AI Mode in August: The initial feature could help locate restaurant reservations based on inputs like party size, location, cuisine, and preferred dates and times. For example, you can enter "find me a table for 8 people next Saturday for a birthday dinner ... thinking outdoor rustic garden vibes with live music" and AI Mode will return suggestions with links to book. While they won't actually finalize the reservation for you, Go…

Google really wants you to use its AI to help you do your holiday shopping, and to that end, it's finally letting AI Mode and Gemini directly link you to products. The new feature is powered by Google's "Shopping Graph," a list of 50 billion products that also informs Google's Shopping tab, and it's available to everyone on both desktop and mobile starting today. Here's how it works: In Google search's AI Mode or the Gemini app/website, you can ask a question or send a prompt about a physical product, like "Help me find an espresso maker that has a steam wand, is affordable, and is good for beginners." If the AI can find relevant product information in the Shopping Graph,…

Today, Google announced three new AI shopping features, all centered around keeping you engaged with its AI throughout the entire shopping process. On the one hand, these features have the potential to make shopping more convenient—on the other hand, maybe lowering friction isn't the best idea when it comes to spending money. Beyond selling you on convenience, these features all share something else in common—helping businesses up their clickthrough rates. It starts with AI Mode and Gemini, which can now access all the same information as Google Search's shopping tab. That means you'll start to see product cards alongside your AI answers, which you can click on for a bunc…

Artificial intelligence continues to be the thing in tech—whether consumers are interested or not. What strikes me most about generative AI isn't its features or potential to make my life easier (a potential I have yet to realize); rather, I'm focused these days on the many threats that seem to be rising from this technology. There's misinformation, for sure—new AI video models, for example, are creating realistic clips complete with lip-synced audio. But there's also the classic AI threat, that the technology becomes both more intelligent than us and self-aware, and chooses to use that general intelligence in a way that does not benefit humanity. Even as he pours resour…

In its Android Security Bulletin for December, Google is pushing an especially large number of updates to address vulnerabilities across different components—and two of the flaws may have been exploited in the wild. The December patch covers 107 bugs across Android Kernel, System, and Framework as well as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Arm, Unisoc, and Imagination Technologies components. The high-severity vulnerabilities include denial of service, elevation of privilege, and information disclosure flaws. There are also a handful of bugs labeled as "critical." Two active exploitsTwo of the vulnerabilities addressed in the December update are zero-days, which are flaws that have be…

Back in the Windows XP days, when the only search functionality was a cartoon dog in the sidebar of Windows Explorer (not a joke), Google released Google Desktop. If you installed the application, you could search the files on your computer the same way you could search the web. The application made finding your own documents quick—as a small town reporter in northern Alberta, I constantly used this service to dig through my old notes and previous articles. The service was shut down in 2011, announced via a blog post, which stated that the feature was no longer necessary in the cloud storage era. And that was the end of Google offering to search files on your computer—unt…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Google Pixel Watch, in either champagne gold with a hazel band or polished silver with a charcoal band, is down to $109.99, $170 off its usual price of $279.99. Google Pixel Watch $109.99 at Walmart $279.99 Save $170.00 …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The old cliché "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies perfectly to the first-generation Google Pixel Watch. Released in 2022, Google's first smart watch looks great, is designed to work with FitBit's infrastructure, and is one of the best deals for Amazon's Big Spring Sale. You can pick one up for $129.99, 61% cheaper than the regular list price of $329.99, and the lowest price this model has ever sold for. Google Pixel Watch …

Google is bringing AI image editing to Gemini, which means that you can use text-based prompts in the Gemini app or website to tweak existing images. This feature has been available in Google AI Studio for some time, and Google is now rolling it out to all Gemini users, with support for 45 languages. Google says you will be able to use conversational prompts to edit both AI-generated images and photos uploaded from your phone or computer. What you can do with Gemini's AI image editingThe most appealing part of this feature is that it lowers the entry barrier for editing photos. You can have a conversation with the Gemini AI chatbot to have it generate an image, or upload …

If you've been running several email accounts through your Gmail, you might want to double-check your settings this month—that's because Google is ending support for the POP3 protocol that can sync emails from third-party accounts. And while there are some other solutions, they don't work quite the same. POP3 is an older standard of syncing emails between multiple accounts that allowed users to import emails from a third-party account and manage them in one spot. It's also a less secure method of transferring emails, so it's not a total surprise that Google is phasing it out, but the company hasn't broadcast the change too loudly, so it might come as a surprise to some us…

Google's latest Android Security Bulletin patches 46 security vulnerabilities impacting Android devices, one of which is a zero-day flaw in FreeType that may be under "limited, targeted exploitation." The security update for May includes fixes for a range of issues: most are an elevation of privilege flaws, though there are a few information disclosure and denial of service vulnerabilities and one remote code execution bug. All are considered high severity. May's patch also addresses vulnerabilities with Qualcomm, MediaTek, Arm, and Imagination Technologies components. One active exploitThe zero-day addressed with the latest update is a remote code execution flaw labeled…

You might not be familiar with the phrase "peanut butter platform heels" but it apparently originates from a scientific experiment, where peanut butter was transformed into a diamond-like structure, under very high pressure—hence the "heels" reference. Except this never happened. The phrase is complete nonsense, but was given a definition and backstory by Google AI Overviews when asked by writer Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios, as per this Threads post (which contains some other amusing examples). The internet picked this up and ran with it. Apparently, "you can't lick a badger twice" means you can't trick someone twice (Bluesky), "a loose dog won't surf" means somethi…

Google has released its April 2025 Android Security Bulletin, which includes patches for 62 vulnerabilities affecting Android devices. Two of the fixes address critical zero-day flaws that may have been exploited in "limited, targeted" attacks, according to Google. Zero-days are security vulnerabilities that are exploited before the software developer can identify the flaw and issue a patch. The security update for April includes fixes for a range of issues, many of which elevation of privilege flaws, as well as vulnerabilities with Qualcomm, MediaTek, Arm, and Imagination Technologies components. Two serious exploitsOne of the zero-day exploits (labeled CVE-2024-53197)…

It's tough to get people to answer the phone—though I'm not really blaming those who don't pick up. We are so inundated with spam calls these days that refusing to answer incoming calls en masse isn't actually a bad strategy. When that call could be someone trying to break into your bank account, or alerting you to fraudulent credit card charges that never happened, perhaps it's best to just wait for friends and family to text instead. But let's say the call is from you to someone you know and trust, and let's assume they see it's you who's calling. Even though they know the call isn't spam, there are still plenty of reasons someone won't pick up the phone—including, of …

Ahead of Google I/O 2025, which starts on May 20, the company has announced a few big accessibility focused features for Android and Google Chrome. Among these are improvements to the Android screen reader, more expressive captions, and easier to read text in Chrome for Android. This follows Apple's recent accessibility focused announcements, with both companies' posts timed to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 15). Here are the best new accessibility features coming to Android and Chrome. Improved screen reader on Android Credit: Google …

Google has officially launched its Gemini 3 Pro model, and for the first time, it's already making its way directly to the public, without making you wait months after the announcement to actually get your hands on it. On top of introducing a few new features, Google says the model has the typical increased accuracy, but also, that it finally cuts down on some of the excessive people-pleasing flattery that drives me nuts when using AI. The catch? Most features are paywalled, and one is still in the oven. For the more obvious improvements, Google says Gemini 3 Pro is at the top of LMArena with a score of 1501 points, while also demonstrating "PhD-level reasoning" on Humani…

Google's budget phone for the masses, the Pixel 9a, will retail at $499 when it launches in April. That's a full $100 less than the iPhone 16e and $300 less than the Pixel 9. Even so, the 9a has many of the same features as the Pixel 9. It carries over the same Tensor G4 chip, and promises to feature most of the Pixel 9's AI suite. Most, but not all. Ars Technica is now reporting that the Pixel 9a will be missing some crucial AI features at launch. That's because the Pixel 9a features 8GB RAM, while the Pixel 9 has 12GB RAM, and the Pixel 9 Pro models feature 16GB RAM. While the Pixel 9a comes with on-device Gemini Nano, Ars Technica confirmed with Google that it's going …

Google is rolling out a new way to generate videos, as well as animate existing images, using AI. The catch? These videos are really short, and you have to pay to play. On Tuesday, Google announced that Gemini Advanced and Google One AI Premium users can now make AI-generated videos using the company's Veo 2 video model. Google originally unveiled this model back in December, touting the model's improved understanding of real-world physics, nuanced human emotions, and ability to generate specific types of shots (e.g. low angle, close-up, shallow depth of field). While Veo 2 is capable of generating 4K videos at several minutes in length, that's not the experience Gemini…

Even in 2025, Google.com still knows how to have fun. If you tend to rely on your browser's address bar for Google Search, you might miss the company's latest "Doodle." But today, Oct. 30, if you head to the Google homepage, you'll find a Halloween-themed surprise: a fully playable PAC-MAN game, outfitted with spooky mazes and characters. The Halloween part makes sense, seeing as the holiday is tomorrow. But why PAC-MAN? As it happens, this year marks the game's 45th anniversary. For this Doodle, Google says it partnered with PAC-MAN's parent company, Bandi Namco Entertainment, to feature a celebratory PAC-MAN game on the homepage. If you're familiar with PAC-MAN, you…

It's Android security patch time again, and in the Android Security Bulletin for February 2025, Google has addressed 47 different bugs affecting its mobile operating system—one of which "may be under limited, targeted exploitation." In other words, hackers may already be taking advantage of it in the wild. As usual, the patches here cover all kinds of different issues, from attacks that could take advantage of the AutoFill function on Android, to exploits in Qualcomm chips that could create corruptions in the memory on a device. Each bug is ranked in terms of its severity, and linked to a particular part of the system. Google doesn't offer too much detail about potential …

The speedy progress of AI development continues to dominate headlines, but the latest story to hit the news cycle is more bad press than good press: It turns out that Google's latest Gemini 2.0 Flash image editor is rather adept at automatically removing watermarks from images. Google pushed out the experimental native image generation capabilities a few days ago, promoting its capabilities in terms of combining images and text, editing images through conversational prompts, and improving its "world understanding" to give users AI-generated pictures that are more realistic overall. As TechCrunch reports, the newly upgraded tool was quickly put to one specific and …

Google announced a lot of new stuff today at I/O, but few things were more eye-watering than the company's new Google AI Ultra subscription. At $250 per month, it's by far the most expensive subscription Google has yet launched. So it makes sense it comes with everything. And I mean everything. For starters, subscribers at this tier get to use Gemini Ultra, which includes the new Veo 3 video generation model that can also generate sounds alongside video, to...some effect. This tier will also be the first to get access to the upcoming 2.5 Pro Deep Think reasoning model that Google says can "consider multiple hypotheses before responding." It also brings access to tools lik…

As it does every year, Google has picked its favorite apps, games, and books of 2025 from the Play Store catalog—and the annual selection is always useful as a pointer towards some high-quality titles for your Android devices that you may have missed so far. Topping the pile is Focus Friend from YouTuber Hank Green, which aims to keep you on task and undistracted via a series of cutesy animations and cartoon living spaces. The less you check your phone, the better the experience for your 'bean' inside the app. It's an app we've written about before, and I've given it a go myself while trying to focus on writing this article with as few distractions as possible. I've also …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Earlier today, you might have seen reports that Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman. That's not really the whole story. While the company did announce a broader rebrand coinciding with the release of a new AI assistant (more on that later), it also assured users that "the Grammarly brand isn't going anywhere." Essentially, what that means is that while Grammarly the company has a new name, Grammarly the product is still going by the same tried-and-true moniker as ever. The confusion follows Grammarly's acquisition of AI-powered email app Superhuman in June, which the company said "accelerates Grammarly's evolution…