Soccer, fútbol, football, jogo bonito—however you say it, there’s a good chance you’ll be tuning in to watch when the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ kicks off next week. But if you’re not lucky enough to have a ticket to the matches in Brazil, you can enjoy the next best thing right in your living room with Chromecast.

Thanks to our friends at Disney and ESPN Media Networks, you can now cast live sports content from the WatchESPN app if you receive ESPN networks as a part of your cable, satellite or pay-TV subscription from affiliated providers. This means that next week, U.S. soccer fans will have the ability to watch all 64 World Cup games with the tap of the cast button (vuvuzelas not included). Of course, in addition to soccer, you can also cast all of ESPN's other sports content, from the NBA Finals and X Games to college football.

And if you can’t wait to get your soccer fix, starting today you can cast professional soccer matchups with the MLS Matchday app and MLS LIVE premium services. So get your friends together to watch your local favorites while practicing the new game-day anthem for the U.S. Men’s National Team from the comfort of your couch.

Even if you're not a sports fan, there are new apps for you to enjoy. Starting today, you can transform your TV into a photo album and cast Google+ photos and videos. Just look for the cast button in the Photos view of Google+ for Android and iOS.

We’re also adding Crunchyroll to the video lineup. Whether you're a casual anime fan or the hardcore otaku, Crunchyroll is your one-stop-shop with over 25,000 videos and 12,000 hours of Anime, Korean Drama and Live-Action titles. Premium Subscribers can even catch episodes just one hour after Japanese TV broadcast.

You can find all of these great apps in the Play Store and Apple Store, with Chromecast support rolling out over the day. As always, you can explore these apps and more on Chromecast.com/apps.

Posted by Brad Foreman, Chromecast Sports Partnerships Lead and Future Soccer Dad

Chromebooks are coming to nine more nations
to improve computing for all generations.

So we’d like to say our Hellos
to our new global Chromebook fellows:

Kia ora to our New Zealand mates,
where getting on-line will have shorter waits.

Kumusta to new friends in the Philippines,
a better way of computing is what this means.

Hallo to all the folks in Norway
Speed, simplicity and security are coming your way.

Hej Hej to the people in Denmark
Built-in virus protection will be your new computing benchmark.

To Mexico and Chile, Hola we say
Tons of apps and free automatic updates are starting today.

And in the coming weeks -- very soon, you’ll see --
Chromebooks will be in Belgium, Spain and Italy.

Chromebooks are easy to share, manage and use,
With lots of shapes, colors and sizes to choose.

Stay safe with your data stored in the cloud,
A smart pick like Chromebook will make your mom proud.

When Chromebooks in these countries alight,
We hope our new global friends find some computing delight.

Posted by David Shapiro, Director of Chromebook Marketing and Occasional Versifier

Whether it's gourmet cooks, international beauty gurus, or K-Pop superstars—if you’re in Australia, Belgium, Japan, Korea, Portugal or Switzerland, you’ll now be able to use Chromecast to bring your favorite content from a phone, tablet, or laptop to the TV.

These countries are home to some of the biggest fans of online content in the world, and the smartphone is one of the most popular ways for them to access it. For example, in Korea, more than 60 percent of YouTube views come from mobile devices. And in Australia, 90 percent of people switch between four devices every day. All these mobile content lovers will now be able to bridge the gap between their smartphone and the TV.

Curious about what people around the world might be casting? We’ve polled our local team members, and here’s some of their favorite local content.

• Australia: Aussies will be casting the latest antics from Rake available on Google Play. 
• Belgium: In Belgium, comedy fans will be able to cast YouTube star Za Ka’s latest sketches.
• Japan: Japanese will be able to cast Golden Bomber’s rock pop hit. They’ll also be able to catch up on the latest movies and dramas using the d-Video app by NTT docomo.
• Korea: Koreans will be casting Cocomong, a super popular animation among kids. They’ll also be able to watch TV shows and movies from Tving and Hoppin.
• Portugal: Portuguese will be making homemade ice creams and chocolates after casting Sabor Intenso’s YouTube recipe tutorials. 
• Switzerland: Swiss music fans will be using the best speakers in the house to listen to local star Bastian Baker.

Chromecast is open to developers worldwide, so you’ll find a range of great TV shows, movies, music and more from local app developers. So if you’re in one of these six countries, look for Chromecast online
and in local stores starting today.

Suveer Kothari, Director of Chromecast business development, and frequent flyer

We’re constantly working to keep Chrome users safe as they browse, with built-in features like Safe Browsing, which blocks many types of malicious websites and downloads. In the case that malicious software has managed to hijack your settings, we've added a “reset browser settings” button, so you can get things back to normal. But since the bad guys continue to come up with new ways to cause our users headaches, we are always taking additional measures. We previously announced that we’re making it more difficult for malware to secretly install unwanted Chrome extensions. Starting today, we’ll start enforcing this policy.

Malware can change how browsers work by silently installing extensions on your machine that do things like inject ads or track your browsing activity. If you notice strange ads, broken web pages or sluggish browsing after installing some new software or plugins, you could be affected.

From now on, to protect Windows users from this kind of attack, extensions can be installed only if they're hosted on the Chrome Web Store.  With this change, extensions that were previously installed may be automatically disabled and cannot be re-enabled or re-installed until they're hosted in the Chrome Web Store.

For developers, we’ll continue to support local extension installs during development as well as installs via Enterprise policy. And if you have a dedicated installation flow from your own website, you can make use of the existing inline installs feature.  Windows developer channel users, as well as those on other operating systems, are unaffected by these changes.

You can reach out to us in our support forums if you're running into problems, or if you think an extension was disabled incorrectly.  If you're a developer and your extension isn't in the store yet, please submit it today. This is just one more step we are taking to make sure our users can browse safely, and enjoy all the Web has to offer without worrying.

Posted by Erik Kay, Engineering Director

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog] 

As a designer, it is always humbling when you encounter a perfect piece of design. Good design attracts our attention with its beauty, doesn’t need a user manual, is universally understood by anyone in the world, and is simple without sacrificing functionality.

In 1974, the world gave us one such piece of perfect design—the Rubik's Cube. Budapest-based educator and inventor Ernő Rubik created the puzzle originally to help his students better understand spatial geometry. Released to the public in the 1980s, it quickly became an international obsession, bigger than hairspray and breakdancing combined. But the Rubik’s Cube is more than just a toy; it’s a puzzle waiting to be solved and a question waiting to be answered. Over the past 40 years, the cube has puzzled, frustrated, and fascinated so many of us, and has helped spark an interest in math and problem solving in millions of kids. That’s part of why so many of us at Google love the cube, and why we're so excited to celebrate its 40th birthday this year. 

As everyone knows (right??), there are 519 quintillion permutations for the Rubik’s cube, so May 19 seemed like a fine day to celebrate its 40th anniversary. To kick things off, we’re using some of our favorite web technologies (HTML5 and Three.js among others) to bring the cube to the world in the form of one of our most technically ambitious doodles yet. You can twist and turn it by dragging along its sides, but with full respect to all the speedcubers out there, we’ve included keyboard shortcuts:

Using the same technology that’s behind the doodle, we built Chrome Cube Lab, a series of Chrome Experiments by designers and technologists that reinterpret Rubik’s puzzle with the full power of the web. Create your own music with experiments 808Cube and SynthCube; make a custom, shareable cube of your own photos and GIFs with ImageCube; or send a scrambly message with the Type Cube. And, if you would like to explore the cube even further, consider borrowing the cube’s source code to build an experiment of your own.

We hope you enjoy getting to know the cube from a few new angles.

Posted by Richard The, Designer and a child of the ‘80s, Creative Lab New York

As a student growing up in France, I was always looking for ways to improve my English, often with a heavy French-to-English dictionary in tow. Since then, technology has opened up a wide world of new educational opportunities, from simple searches to Google Translate (and our backpacks have gotten a lot lighter). But it can be hard to find time and the means to practice a new language. So when the Web Speech API made it possible to speak to our phones, tablets and computers, I got curious about whether this technology could help people learn a language more easily.

That’s the idea behind Spell Up, a new word game and Chrome Experiment that helps you improve your English using your voice—and a modern browser, of course. It’s like a virtual spelling bee, with a twist.

We worked with game designers and teachers to make Spell Up both fun and educational. The goal of the game is to correctly spell the words you hear and stack them to build the highest word tower you can—letter by letter, word by word. The higher the tower gets, the more difficult the word challenges: You’ll be asked to pronounce words correctly, solve word jumbles and guess mystery words. You can earn bonuses and coins to level up faster.

We worked with game designers and teachers to make Spell Up both fun and educational, and we encourage teachers to try it in the classroom.

Spell Up works best in Chrome on your computer and on Android phones and tablets. (It also works on iPhones and iPads, but you’ll need to type rather than talk.) Whether you’re just learning English or you’re already a pro, check it out! And if you’re a teacher, we encourage you to try it out in your classroom.

Posted by Xavier Barrade, Creative Lead and Polyglot, Creative Lab London

Spring has finally arrived in the U.S. And with the new growth the season brings, we’re happy to expand our Chromebook family. Together with Intel, today we’re announcing a new lineup of Chromebooks with Intel inside from leading manufacturers Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG and Toshiba—spanning an entire range of shapes, sizes, colors and configurations.

Lenovo’s N20p Chromebook and Thinkpad YOGA 11e Chromebook offer options for touchscreen and hinge designs that enable tablet or tented-angle usage, so they’re just as easy to use at your desk or coffee table, on your lap or at school.

ASUS is following the success of their Chromebox (now the most popular desktop on Amazon.com) by introducing two new laptops: The ASUS C200 Chromebook (11-inch) and ASUS C300 Chromebook (13-inch).

New versions of the Dell Chromebook 11 and the Acer C720 Chromebook will be powered by Intel’s Core i3 processor, which packs the additional performance to help you get things done faster. These new Chromebooks, along with a new 13-inch Toshiba model, a Chromebox from HP, and the LG Chromebase (the first all-in-one computer running Chrome OS), will be available in retail over the next few months.

We hope that you get a chance to try one—or more—of these new Chromebooks soon.

Posted by Bill Brougher, Director, Chrome OS Partner Engineering