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Showing posts from November, 2017

Weekly Update - November 25, 2017: Google Lens, YouTube Policy, Cyber Monday

All shopped out? Tired of turkey? Check out this week’s updates and tips. This week there are tidbits for YouTubers, live streamers, webmasters, AdSense Publishers and more. Google Lens ( announced in May ) has finally come to the Google Assistant and Google Photos on Pixel phones. Lens can identify (or at least try to identify) what your camera is pointing to, from flower species to landmarks to works of art and movie posters. It can also scan bar codes and QR codes, and save and navigate to addresses, call phone numbers and add dates to your calendar.  There's no word when or if it will be available on other devices. In the wake of last week’s articles pointing to disturbing and spammy content seemingly aimed at kids, YouTube announced updated policies and improved enforcement. They are age-restricting and disabling monetization on some videos, removing thousands of others, and - as of last week - had terminated 50 channels under the new policies. But major advertisers a

Weekly Update - November 18, 2017: Google+ Profiles, Google Maps Icons, YouTube Kids content

This week there are updates for Plussers, YouTubers and much more: Google+ has a new Profile “About” card on desktop, which nicely formats your personal details, and provides buttons to contact the profile owner directly. Check yours today to see if your profile needs tweaking. Google Maps updated its look to make it easier to identify businesses, services and landmarks. There are new color-coded icons and the icons you see are more context dependent - if you’re using driving navigation, you will see gas stations, while if you are using public transit, you’ll see train stations. YouTube announced that in-video notifications of a featured video or playlist will be discontinued December 14 . It turns out, very few people follow those links, and those who do sometimes are taken to a non-existent live stream. YouTube is encouraging using Cards and End Screens to promote your videos and playlists instead. YouTube also came under fire this week as media outlets noticed that there we

Weekly Update - November 11, 2017: Google Docs & Slides, AdSense, Chrome & Ads

This week Google Top Contributors from North and South America (and a few other places) met in Mountain View, California to learn, shmooze, and have some fun. It was a great time, and it was awesome to see everyone in person. In the past few weeks, there were also meetups in Dublin, Ireland and Singapore for Top Contributors around the world. Check out the photos of all three TC Summits on Google+, Twitter , and Instagram . As a result, the Weekly Update will be a bit shorter than usual this week. Here are my top updates: The image insertion process for Google Docs, Slides, and Drawings has been redesigned. Now you can more easily add one of your own photos or a photo from the web to your document or presentation. Google Docs and Slides now has fonts to support 62 languages , including non-Latin scripts like Cyrillic and Devanagari The AdSense ad balance tool is back - it lets you reduce the number of ads you show to visitors to your website without significantly decreasing yo

Weekly Update - November 4, 2017: YouTube Live, Google+ Notifications, Hangouts Meet

Fortify yourself with leftover Halloween candy and a cup of tea, and take a look at this week's updates for YouTubers, live streamers, Google Plussers, Hangouts Meeters, business owners, Local Guides and more. Live stream events are now easier to manage on YouTube. You can now copy settings from previous events, auto-start and there is automatic resolution detection. Small YouTube channels can now join in on the mobile live streaming fun - you only need 25 subscribers to stream from the YouTube mobile app. There was a big update for Google Hangouts Meet for G Suite Enterprise accounts. Now you can record your video calls to Google Drive and include up to 50 participants. And all Hangouts Meet users can use the new Meet hardware, which includes a 4k camera, speakermic, Chromebook and controller. The Google+ desktop notifications page now lets you open notifications in a new tab (hooray!!) and includes hovercards, so you can see more about the person who +1’d you right from the