Peggy K's Creator News

It’s been relatively quiet in the Googleverse this week. It’s so much easier to keep up with the changes when new features and updates aren’t launched one on top of the other! What’s new in the Googleverse (and beyond) this week? Google+ Communities got a nice update. You can use the new Community Member Activity View to see all the posts from a member of a particular Community. It’s useful for moderators, and helpful if you want to see what a specific person posted about. And if you love Google+, and want to give feedback on features under development, you can apply to be a Google+ beta tester!  Android early adopters and developers: Developer Preview 4 now available, official Android O coming soon! My big question: what will “O” be? Orange Marmalade? Oreo? Oatmeal Cookie? Adobe announced they will be saying goodbye to Flash by the end of 2020. Even though the use of Flash on the web has decreased significantly in the past few years, but it’s still in use for videos a

Here are this week’s updates in the Googleverse and beyond. For Creators, YouTube gives - block comments with links - and YouTube takes away - Video Editor and Slide Show will be retired YouTube fights terrorist recruitment by redirecting searches The Google+ G+1 button on 3rd party web sites no longer displays +1 count. If you plussed sites in the past, you can download the links and use them as bookmarks.  Google Analytics now lets you ask about your site’s stats in natural English And there are more tips and updates for live streamers, video creators (and watchers), business owners, website publishers, Hangouts Meeters and more. Image: Google Street View arrives in Space , with a walk-through of the International Space Station. Start here. The image is the Earth’s atmospheric glow and the stars of the Milky Way , and an experiment module at the tip of Japan’s Kibo module on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA ( NASA Media Usage Guidelines )

Summertime, summertime sum sum summertime ( Summertime! ). There are some rockin’ updates this week: Photo sphere support in the Google+ web lightbox is back! (song: Look Around ) Google introduces desktop Backup and Sync for Google Photos and Drive (song: Kodachrome ) AdSense policy update: no ads on pop-ups or pop-unders or sites that triggers pop-unders (song: Pop Muzik ) Google Forms gets a big update with new features and machine learning  (song: Questionnaire ) New Release Radio on Google Play Music lets you listen to the latest music releases that suit your taste (song: Baby I’m a Star ) ((and yes, I should start listening to get up to date :))  Hangouts v.21 added five new emoticon shortcodes \m/(><)_\m/ (song: Send me a Picture ) Tech giants Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and more came out in support of net neutrality - some more than others (song: Life in the Fast Lane ) Plus updates and tips for business owners, YouTubers, live streamers, Plussers,

There weren't too many updates this week, perhaps because of the US July 4th holiday, or maybe because it's summer. But there are always a few new things for Creators. Here are my top announcements: AdSense introduced Native Ads. There has been some speculation that the ads could violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines , and Google hasn’t responded to that. Perhaps use with caution? Photobucket breaks images across the internet. In a quiet ToS update, Photobucket disabled imaged embedding and linking, which are now only available to paid accounts that cost $399 per year. That has resulted in images disappearing from blogs and forums across the web. YouTube Gaming has provided more details on sponsorships and custom emojis. Sponsorships are still in beta, but when they launch, creators will be able to offer custom emoji in live chat - the more sponsors, the more custom emoji for the channel. If you are interested testing sponsorships you can apply for the beta program .

Summer is heating up, and there are all kinds of nice updates this week. Google+ turned 6 this week. The celebration was a bit quieter than last year, but there was a nice update, making it easier for Community moderators to remove spammers and other unwanted commenters. There was also another i nteresting Google+ Collections 101 panel. Watch it to help take your Collections to the next level! There were some tasty announcements at the YouTube Creator keynote at VidCon last weekend, including Comment Topics and Super Chat availability in more countries . There is also a redesign of Creator Studio in the works, and you can apply to get early access to YouTube Studio Beta. A YouTube experiment is rolling out to some users: Animated video preview thumbnails coming to desktop And, if you like to share your videos, Uptime, Google's experimental YouTube party app, is available without an invitation Google Photos rolling out suggested sharing and shared libraries, which were ann