Walmart and Staples in the U.S. to carry various Chromebook models

With the somewhat quiet success of Chromebook sales through its original sales channels of Amazon and Best Buy continuing, Google announced today that it is expanding retail availability of the laptops to three times the number of stores. Starting today, Walmart will carry the lowest-end Chromebook model from Acer, which comes in at just $199. This weekend Staples will begin to carry Acer, HP and Samsung Chromebook models in every one of its U.S. stores, as well as online or through its Staples Advantage B2B program if buying for enterprise. Additionally, Office Depot, Office Max, Fry's and TigerDirect will all begin to carry Chromebooks.

Google is also expanding worldwide availability in the other 10 markets worldwide that have Chromebooks available, with new retail partners such as Dixons in the U.K. and new stores in the Netherlands, France, Sweden and Australia. New countries will be announced later this year also. In all, 6,600 stores will now be carrying Chromebooks worldwide.

If it wasn't apparent before, Google is taking the availability of Chromebooks seriously, and we'll be hearing even more about them in the coming months.

Source: Official Google Blog

Full price hits $399 with a two-year contract and no smart phone purchase bundle

AT&T has finally announced the availability and pricing of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, and it is offering an interesting new option to purchase the device. Starting June 21st, the LTE-enabled device will be available for $399 with a two-year contract, which may seem a bit steep but isn't the only purchase option. AT&T is also offering a smart phone bundle deal, so that if you choose to buy a Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Active or Galaxy Note 2 at the same time the price of the Note 8.0 drops to $199. Bundling may save you some money on the data plan side as well if you opt to go with a mobile share plan, which only adds $10 per month to your bill to access your shared data.

If you needed a quick refresher, the Note 8.0 is an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean device with a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 1280x800 display and a sizable 4600mAh battery. You've of course got all of the nice S Pen stylus functionality as well as Samsung's software included to take advantage of it. You'll be able to take advantage of the smart phone bundle deal both online and in-store starting this friday.

Source: AT&T

The Kindle Fire HD is mostly Android, has an awesome screen, access to Amazon Prime videos and an 8.9-inch Wifi version can be yours if the random number gods smile on you. I've got too many tablets and not enough time to love them all, so this one has to find a new home. 

If you've been following along you know the drill. If you're new, welcome aboard and here's how it works -- just leave a comment below. Sometime late tonight I'll shut the comments down, and pick a comment at random as the winner. We use the email address you have on file here at AC to contact you, so make sure it's valid and that you check it.

Good luck!

Google Play cards are a great way to buy apps and media, and redeeming them is easy

Google announced Google Play cards late last summer in the U.S., and have since been made available in Canada and the U.K. Of course, we all want them to be able to go global with the service, but there has been no word of when we can expect that to happen. In the meantime, if you're in a supported country, it's nice to know just how to apply the balance from a card to your Google account.

It's a pretty simple affair. You can find the gift cards themselves at retailers like Target or Walmart in the US and Canada,  and Tesco and Morrisons in the U.K. They come in $10, $15, $25 and $50 denominations in North America, and £10, £25 and £50 in the U.K. You'll find them next to iTunes cards in most retailers, and you buy them like any other item off the shelf from the store. Once you get them home, adding the balance to your account is easy.

Visit our Google Play mini-site for everything there is to know about Google Play

Just months after first hitting the Twitter token max, Falcon Pro must once again sidestep the limit

Falcon Pro, one of the leading third-party Twitter apps for Android, has once again hit the 100,000 active user token limit. The token limit is imposed by Twitter on all third-party clients with which it doesn't have a direct partnership, and it's not the first time Falcon has fallen run up against this particular wall. The app first hit 100,000 tokens back in late February, and the solution today is the same one employed back then -- revoke the original tokens and require everyone to sign in again, thus resetting the counter for a few more months.

It's a temporary workaround, and far from an ideal solution, but for smaller third-party apps like Falcon it's the only real option available. In a Twitter post, developer Joaquim Vergès describes it as "the least dodgy solution." If you're a Falcon Pro user, there's a new update to the app going out now that'll require you to log in again once it's installed. If you've yet to give it a try, you can pick it up from Google Play using the button above.

Source: @falcon_android

Popular third-party SmugMug app SmugFolio has graduated to official status, while also being updated with a handful of new features.  Following an acquisition by SmugMug, SmugFolio is now the official Android app for the photo-sharing service. What that means is that the app will now wear the official SmugMug branding, but function just as it did before, and continue to be overseen by the same developer.

The new SmugMug app also boasts some new features. Firstly, it's now possible to browse favorite users' photos without logging into the app, allowing galleries to be more easily accessible to the general public. Sign-in has been made more secure with the implementation of OAuth as part of the login process. And to prepare for future updates, the new app requires Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) or higher. Android 2.x owners can continue to use the existing SmugFolio app, the company says.

To grab the newly official SmugMug app for Android, hit the Google Play link above.

Source: SmugMug

Hey! You! There on the Internet! 

We've just rolled out the start of the second round of Talk Mobile, and we're going to start doing daily Hangouts once things are live. 

The first Hangout is about to begin (around 1 p.m. EDT today). Keep on keepin' on and join us!

Skype this morning announced that it's taking its video messaging feature out of "preview" status and keeping it as a free feature on its desktop, Android, iOS and BlackBerry apps. (Windows Phone, oddly, is omitted.)

The feature records up to 3 minutes of video that then gets sent to a specific contact's Skype account either directly, or as soon as they're back online. 

Ask and ye shall receive. We've just rolled out Version 1.2.5 of the Android Central app, adding (among other things) a dark-themed widget, which you can see here.

We've also squashed a couple of pressing bugs. Want the full changelog? Of course you do.