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Weekly Update - July 18, 2020: Google Chat, Meet, Live Streaming

This week Google announced their vision for a “home for work” with integrated Gmail, Docs, Meet video calling and Chat. One place with all your apps. There was an AMA with the YouTube gaming team, who answered questions about live streaming, monetization and gaming content.

Google Cloud Next ‘20: On Air

This week Google Cloud Next On Air kicked off with “Industry insights”. Of particular note is Google’s vision for G Suite as a “home for work”, with deeper integration between Gmail, Google Meet, Google Chat, Docs and more. Sign in to Gmail and you will be able to chat with your colleagues, join a video call, edit documents, and more without switching between different sites. Watch the demo video.

There are new safety and privacy features for Google Meet video meetings that will be available in the coming weeks, starting with personal accounts (yay!) and G Suite for Education:
All participants in a G Suite for Education-hosted meeting will now need to be signed in to a Google account. Anonymous participants cannot join. Admins can request an exception to this policy. (It is already the case that all participants must be signed in to a Google account to join a meetings hosted by a personal account)
  • “Knocking controls” : If someone is ejected from a meeting, they will not be able to try to join the meeting again, unless the host invites them.
  • “Safety Locks”: the meeting host can decide which attendees can chat or present in the meeting.
  • Meet in Gmail is now rolling out on iOS devices, and will be available in the Android Gmail app soon.
Google Chat is the successor to the text communication in classic Hangouts. It’s currently only available to G Suite customers and the people they invite to their conversations and “Rooms”. There will be new integrations and features. But no word when Chat may be available to personal accounts.
Like Google Meet, Chat is already available in Gmail on the web, and will be coming to the mobile Gmail app.
  • Shared files and tasks will be added to Rooms. You will be able to open and co-edit a document with your team in a Room without leaving Gmail.
  • You can join a video call from a chat, forward a chat message to your inbox, create a task from a chat message.
  • Use search in Gmail to search Chat.
  • Pin important rooms so they’re easier to find and access
  • Set your availability to “Do Not Disturb”
  • Add a status notice like “Out of office”
There should be more details next week when the focus is on productivity and collaboration.

More Productivity

Video and live streaming

Webmasters and Publishers

Other News

Twitter suffered a serious security breach. It was discovered when a number of prominent accounts, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, and former President Barack Obama tweeted out a Bitcoin scam. According to Twitter, a “small number” of their employees were compromised through a “social engineering” scheme that gave the attackers access to Twitter’s internal support tools. 

130 accounts were targeted, and 45 of those had their password reset, allowing the hijackers to sign in to those accounts and tweet. That means the attackers likely had full access to those accounts, including DMs Eight accounts had an archive of their data downloaded, although none of those were verified accounts. This is quite troubling, and hopefully Twitter will provide more information about how they will prevent such attacks in the future.

Upcoming

That’s all the updates for this week. Subscribe to get the Weekly Update in your email inbox or favorite feed reader every week. Miss last week’s update? Get it here.

Image: Photo of Earth and Comet NEOWISE taken from the International Space Station, provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. Once it completes its nearby pass, NEOWISE won’t be in our part of the Solar System again for another 6800 years. Learn more..(Terms of Use)

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