Google's Arts & Culture app for Android
Google launched the Android application Arts & Culture recently which takes you on a journey throughout the world to explore art, history and all that good stuff.
The application requires no extra privileges which is always a good start but needs an Internet connection. Once installed and opened, it greets you with a list of featured items and "on this day" information that you can explore.
You may switch from the focus on art to history or wonders instead to get different featured items and recommendations on start.
Art concentrates on man-made items, history on certain events of the past, and wonders on wondrous natural or man-made things that are usually large in proportion.
Arts & Culture
You can tap on any item to view a larger version of it, or on the title displayed underneath it to load additional information, usually in form of text that provide you with background information.
Details are provided for most items that reveal the exact title, creation date, the name of the artist, and the museum or place you can check it out in person.
The "discover more" section uses tags, the artist's name, the museum, or a type of art, that you can explore directly from that page.
This is well done, and provides you with the opportunity to explore an artist's work or check out a museum to see what else it offers. Options to explorer artwork by time period, type or even color are provided as well.
While you can explore museums, places or artists this way, you can also use the search to do so. Just type a name in the search box at the top, e.g. "Warsaw", "Starry Night", "MoMA" or "Turner", and you will either get a direct hit or a list of suggestions.
The information provided can be quite useful to plan an itinerary for a stay. If you plan to visit New York or London for instance, you can use the application to check out museums, art and places of interest to better plan your stay.
When you search for a place, you get a lot of suggestions usually in the results. This includes highlighted partners (usually museums), and also a list of exhibits that you can take a look at using the application.
You may zoom in and out of artwork once it is loaded, and there is a special "zoom views" category designed specifically for that as well. The quality of the image that is loaded is high which means that downloads may be fairly large when you are using the zoom mode.
Museum Views is another interesting option provided by Google's Arts & Culture application. It enables you to take virtual tours of museums and heritage sites similar to how Google Street View works.
Basically, what happens is that a view of a site is loaded with one or multiple direction markers attached to the screen. You can rotate freely and use the direction markers to walk in the highlighted direction.
Closing Words
Arts & Culture is an excellent application that is well designed and feature rich. It is useful for anyone interested in art, students, and travelers.
One thing that I wish the app would support is an offline mode to preload content.
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?