Google experiment shows fine art matches to your color palette of choice

Google’s Art & Culture Experiments caught headlines recently when its viral selfie feature let you match a photo of your face with your long-lost twin in the world of the arts (you might have seen tons of these on your social media timelines). But that isn’t the only experiment Google is running. This new one called Art Palette will appeal to creatives or even just art enthusiasts. It lets you take any color combination and match these with artwork taken from Google’s institutional partners that include museums from all over the world. Google’s engineers made use of a color analysis algorithm on thousands of pieces of art to get the five hues that define them. Google’s reason for creating this feature is to help “creative experts in art, design, and beyond to make informed choices regarding color palettes, understanding the context and history behind each one.”

To use the feature, you just need to upload an image or take a photo with your phone and Art Palette will analyze the image for you to find paintings and sculptures that match. You can also opt to do the search with a colour palette, using the colour picker within the app.

Source: Fast Co.Design

YouTube tests video thumbnails in notifications for Android users

Hoping perhaps to give more context to the latest videos from your favorite YouTube channels, the video streaming service is testing out a new thing for Android users. Instead of just showing you the title and what channel it comes from, the notification will now also show a small video thumbnail. YouTube drops the words “New from” in favor of making space for the image. This feature is still being tested, though, so don’t expect it to head your way so soon. What do you think? Do you like the change?

Source: Android Police

You can play ‘Where’s Waldo’ on Google Maps for the rest of the week

Earlier in March, Google Maps commemorated Mario Day by integrating Mario into Maps. They’re doing the same thing again this time but as an extension of their April Fool’s Day prank. You can play Where’s Waldo on Android, iOS, and desktop versions of Maps. Waldo will pop up when you open the app and you just need to tap on him to start playing the game that’s straight out of the classic children’s books. You’ll be given the opportunity to not just search for him but his friends as well. Once you’ve located him or all of his friends, you’ll be taken to a different level on another part of the planet. Google says there’s even a Google Assistant component to this so you can try asking “Where’s Waldo?” on your Assistant-supported device and see what happens.

Source: The Verge

Google Play Store now shows more users what an app’s ranking is in its listings

Want to find out how popular the app you’re downloading is? Google Play Store is rolling out to more users the ability to see how popular an app is. Right below the Install/Uninstall and Open buttons you’ll see what the rank of a particular app is. Perhaps this might sway your decision whether you wanted to download a specific app or not. Google was seen testing this feature out last fall but it looks like it’s being released to more users now.

Source: Android Police